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Autobiography 
of a Child 

‘By 

HANS^AH LT^CH 



Tori 

T)odd, dMead & Company 
1899 


. K ^ 




Copyright^ tP.qS^ 

By Dodd, Mead and Company 


r\t ' 



FIRST copy, 

'S'5-'3'b% 


Contents 


CHAP. page 

I. Looking Backward ... i 
j- II. Mary Jane 7 

III. My Brother Stevie ... 17 

IV. The Last Days of Hap- 

I PINESS 33 

^ V. Martyrdom 43 

VI. Grandfather Cameron . . 49 

‘ VII. Profiles of Childhood . . 60 

VIII. Revolt 79 

IX. My Friend Mary Ann . . 89 

X. The Great News .... 98 

XL Preparing to Face the 

World 107 

XII. An Exile from Erin . .113 

XIII. At Lysterby 120 

XIV. The White Lady of Lys- 

terby 129 

XV. An Exile in Revolt . . 136 

XVI. My First Confession . . 143 


Contents 


CHAP. 


PAGE 

XVII. 

The Christmas Hampers 

154 

XVIII. 

Mr. Parker the Danc- 



ing-Master . . . . 

160 

XIX. 

Episcopal Protection 

170 

XX. 

Home for the Holidays 

182 

XXI. 

Old Acquaintance . . 

188 

XXII. 

A Princess of Legend . 

201 

XXIII. 

My First Taste of Free- 



dom 

207 

XXIV. 

My Eldest Sister . . 

212 

XXV. 

Our Ball 

219 

XXVI. 

The Shadows . . . . 

230 

XXVII. 

A Dismal End of Holi- 



days 

238 

XXVIII. 

My First Communion . 

246 

XXIX. 

The Last of Lysterby 



AND Childhood 

253 


AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A 
CHILD 

Chapter I. 

LOOKING BACKWARD. 

The picture is clear before me of the day I 
first walked. My mother, a handsome, cold- 
eyed woman, who did not love me, had driven 
out from town to nurse’s cottage. I shut my 
eyes, and I am back in the little parlour with 
its spindle chairs, an old-fashioned piano with 
green silk front, its pink-flowered wall-paper, 
and the two wonderful black-and-white dogs 
on the mantelpiece. There were two pictures I 
loved to gaze upon — Robert Emmett in the 
dock, and Mary Stuart saying farewell to 
France. I do not remember my mother’s com- 
ing or going. Memory begins to work from the 
moment nurse put me on a pair of unsteady legs. 
There were chairs placed for me to clutch, and I 
was coaxingly bidden to toddle along, *Wer to 


I. 


Autobiography of a Child 

mamma/’ It was very exciting. First one chair 
had to be reached, then another fallen over, till 
a third tumbled me at my mother’s feet. I burst 
into a passion of tears, not because of the fall, 
but from terror at finding myself so near my 
mother. Nurse gathered me into her arms and 
began to coo over me, and here the picture 
fades from my mind. 

My nurse loved me devotedly, and of course 
spoiled me. Most of the villagers helped her 
in this good work, so that the first seven years 
of my childhood, in spite of baby-face unblest by 
mother’s kiss, were its happiest period. Women 
who do not love their children do well to put 
them out to nurse. The contrast of my life at 
home and the years spent with these rustic 
strangers is very shocking. The one petted, 
cherished, and untroubled; the other full of dark 
terrors and hate, and a loneliness such as grown 
humanity cannot understand without experience 
of that bitterest of all tragedies — unloved and 
ill-treated childhood. But I was only reminded 
of my sorrow at nurse’s on the rare occasion 
of my mother’s visits, or when nurse once a 
month put me into my best clothes, after wash- 
ing my face with blue mottled soap — >a thing I 
detested — and carried me off on the mail-car to 


2 


Autobiography of a Child 

town to report my health and growth. This was 
a terrible hour for me. From a queen I fell to 
the position of an outcast. My stepfather alone 
inspired me with confidence. He was a big 
handsome man with a pleasant voice, and he 
was always kind to me in a genial, thoughtless 
way. He would give me presents which my 
mother would angrily seize from me and give to 
her other children, not from love, for she was 
hardly kinder to them than to me, but from an 
implacable passion to wound, to strike the smile 
from the little faces around her, to silence a 
child’s laughter with terror of herself. She was a 
curious woman, my mother. Children seemed 
to inspire her with a vindictive animosity, with 
a fury for beating and banging them, against 
walls, against chairs, upon the ground, in a way 
that seems miraculous to me now how they 
were saved from the grave and she from the 
dock. 

She had a troop of pretty engaging children, 
mostly girls, only one of whom she was ever 
known to kiss or caress, and to the others she 
was worse than the traditional stepmother of 
fairy tale. It was only afterwards I learned that 
those proud creatures I, in my abject solitude, 
hated and envied, lived in the same deadly fear 


3 


Autobiography of a Child 

of her with which her cold blue eyes and thin 
cruel lips inspired me with. 

But there were, thank God! many bright 
hours for me, untroubled by her shadow. I 
was a little sovereign lady in my nurse’s kindly 
village, admired and never thwarted. I toddled 
imperiously among a small world in corduroy 
breeches and linsey skirts, roaming unwatched 
the fields and lanes from daylight until dark. 
We sat upon green banks and made daisy 
chains, and dabbled delightedly with the sand 
of the pond edges, while we gurgled and chat- 
tered and screamed at the swans. 

The setting of that nursery biography is 
vague. It seemed to me that the earth was made 
up of field beyond field, and lanes that ran from 
this world to the next, with daisies that never 
could be gathered, they were so many; and an 
ocean since has impressed me less with the 
notion of immensity of liquid surface than the 
modest sheet of water we called the Pond. Years 
afterwards I walked out from town to that 
village, and how small the pond was, how short 
the lanes, what little patches for fields so sparsely 
sprinkled with daisies! A more miserable disil- 
lusionment I have not known. 

I have always marvelled at the roll of reminis- 


4 


Autobiography of a Child 

cences and experiences of childhood told con- 
secutively and with coherence. Children live 
more in pictures, in broken effects, in unac- 
countable impulses that lend an unmeasured 
significance to odd trifles to the exclusion of 
momentous facts, than in story. This alone 
prevents the harmonious fluency of biography 
in an honest account of our childhood. Mem- 
ory is a random vagabond, and plays queer 
tricks with proportion. It dwells on pictures 
of relative unimportance, and revives incidents 
of no practical value in the shaping of our 
lives. Its industry is that of the idler’s, waste- 
ful, undocumentary, and untrained. For vivid- 
ness without detail, its effects may be com- 
pared With a canvas upon which a hasty dauber 
paints a background of every obscure tint in an 
inextricable confusion, and relieves it with 
sharply defined strokes of bright colour. 

Jim Cochrane, my everyday papa, as I called 
him, was a sallow-faced man with bright black 
eyes, which he winked at me over the brim of 
his porter-measure, as he refreshed himself at 
the kitchen fire after a hard day’s work. He 
was an engine-driver, and once took me on the 
engine with him to the nearest station, he and a 
comrade holding me tight between them, while 


5 


Autobiography of a Child 

I shrieked and chattered in all the bliss of a first 
adventure. 

This is a memory of sensation, not of sight. 
I recall the rush through the air, the sting, like 
needle-points against my cheeks and eyelids, 
of the bits of coal that flew downward from the 
roll of smoke, the shouting men laughing and 
telling me not to be afraid, the red glare of the 
furnace whenever they slid back the grate open- 
ing, the whiff of fright and delight that thrilled 
me, and, above all, the confidence I had that I 
was safe with nurse’s kind husband. 

Poor Jim! His was the second dead face I 
looked upon without understanding death. The 
ruthless disease of the Irish peasant was con- 
suming him then, and he died before he had 
lived half his life through. 


6 


Chapter II. 


MARY JANE. 

Mary Jane was my first subject and my dear- 
est friend. She lived in a little cottage at the 
top of the village that caught a tail-end view of 
the pond and the green from the back windows. 

It is doubtful if I ever knew what calling her 
father followed, and I have forgotten his name. 
But Mary Jane I well remember, and the view 
from those back windows. She was older than 
I, and was a very wise little woman, without 
my outbursts of high spirits and inexplicable 
reveries. She had oiled black curls, the pinkest 
of cheeks, and black eyes with a direct and 
resolute look in them, and she read stories that 
did not amuse or interest me greatly, because 
they were chiefly concerned with good everyday 
boys and girls. She tried to still a belief in 
fairies by transforming them into angels, but 
she made splendid daisy chains, and she could 
balance herself like a bird upon the branches 
that overhung the pond. 


7 


Autobiography of a Child 

Here she would swing up and down in fas- 
cinating peril, her black curls now threatening 
confusion with the upper branches, her feet then 
skimming the surface of the water. It was a 
horrible joy to watch her and calculate the 
moment when the water would close over branch 
and boots and curls. 

My first attempt to imitate her resulted in my 
own immersion, and a crowd to the rescue from 
the nearest public-house. After the shock and 
the pleasant discovery that I was not drowned, 
and was really nothing the worse for my bath, 
I think I enjoyed the sensation of being tempo- 
rarily regarded in the light of a public personage. 
But Mary Jane howled in a rustic abandonment 
to grief. She told me afterwards she expected 
to be taken to prison, and believed the Queen 
would sentence her to be hanged. It took longer 
to comfort her than to doctor me. 

It was some time after that before I again 
attempted to swing upon the branches over the 
pond, but contented myself with feeding the 
swans from the bank upon a flat nauseous cake 
indigenous to the spot, I believe, which a shriv- 
elled old woman used to sell us at a stall hard 
by. There were flower-beds and a rural chalet 
near the pond, which now leads me to conclude 


8 


Autobiography of a Child 

that the green was a single-holiday resort, for I 
remember a good deal of cake-crumbs, orange- 
peds, and empty ginger-beer bottles about the 
place. 

The old woman was very popular with us. 
Even when we had no pennies to spend, she 
would condescend to chat with us as long as 
we cared to linger about her stall of delights, 
and she sometimes wound up the conversation 
by the gift of our favourite luxury, a crab-apple. 

I fear there was not one of us that would not 
cheerfully have signed away our future both 
here and hereafter for an entire trayful of crab- 
apples. Each tray held twelve, placed two and 
two, like school-ranks; and I know not which 
were the more bewitching to the eye, the little 
trays or the demure double rows of little apples. 
The child rich enough to hold out a pinafore for 
Bessy to wreck this harmony of tray and line 
by pouring twelve heavenly balls into it, asked 
nothing more from life in the way of pleasure. 

The pride of Mary Jane’s household was an 
album containing views of New York, whither 
Mary Jane’s eldest brother had gone. New 
York, his mother told us, was in America. The 
difficulty for my understonding was to explain 
how any place so big as New York could find 


9 


Autobiography of a Child 

another place big enough to stand in. Why 
was New York in America and not America in 
New York? 

Neither Mary Jane nor her mother could make 
anything of my question. They said you went 
across the sea in a ship to New York, and when 
they added that the sea was all water, I imme- 
diately thought that they must mean the pond, 
and that if I once got to the other side of it I 
should probably find America and New York. 

Until then I had believed the other side of 
the pond to be heaven, because the sky seemed 
to touch the tops of the trees. But it was nicer 
to think of it as America, because there was a 
greater certainty of being able to get back from 
America than from heaven, — above all, when I 
was so unexpectedly made acquainted with the 
extremely disagreeable method by which little 
children are transported thither. 

I do not know where nurse can have taken 
Mary Jane and me once. I have for years cher- 
ished the idea that it was to Cork, which was 
a long way off; but I am assured since that she 
never took me anywhere in a train, and that 
certainly I never was in Cork. 

This is a mystery to me, for the most vivid 
recollection of those early years is a train jour- 


10 


Autobiography of a Child 

ney with nurse and Mary Jane. I remember 
the train steaming slowly into a station: the 
hurry, the bustle, the different tone of voices 
round me, and Mary Jane’s knowing exclama- 
tion, ‘"Angela, this is Cork, one of the biggest 
towns of Ireland — ^as fine, they say, as Dublin.” 

Now, if I were never in Cork, never travelled 
with nurse and Mary Jane, will any one explain 
to me how I came to remember those words so 
distinctly? Odder still, I am absolutely con- 
vinced that nurse took my hand in an excited 
grasp, and led me, bewildered and enchanted, 
through interminable streets full of such a di- 
versity of objects and interests as dazed my 
imagination like a blow. Not that I was un- 
acquainted with city aspects; but this was all so 
different, so novel, so much more brilliant than 
the familiar capital ! 

I remember the vivid shock of military scar- 
let in a luminous atmosphere, and smiling for- 
eign faces, and several ladies stopped to look at 
me and cry, “Oh, the little angel!” I was quite 
the ideal wax doll, pretty, delicate, and abnor- 
mally fair. I believe Mary Jane worshipped me 
because of the whiteness of my skin and for my 
golden hair. 

Memories of this journey I never made and 


II 


Autobiography of a Child 

of this town I never visited do not end here. 
After eternal wanderings through quite the live- 
liest streets I have ever known, without remem- 
brance of stopping, of entrance or greetings, I 
find myself in an unfamiliar room with nurse, 
Mary Jane, a strange lady, and my mother. My 
mother was dressed in pale green poplin, and 
looked miraculously beautiful. I know the dress 
was poplin, because nurse said so when I 
touched the long train and wondered at its stiff- 
ness. 

She looked at me coldly, and said to nurse — 

^That child has had sunstroke. I never saw 
her so red. You must wash her in new milk.’' 

Whereupon she rang a bell, and cried out to 
somebody I did not see to fetch a basin of milk 
and a towel. I shuddered at the thought that 
perhaps my mother would wash my face instead 
of nurse, for I dreaded nothing so much as con- 
tact with that long white hand of sculptural 
shape. 

Among the mysteries of my life nothing seems 
so strange to me as the depth of this physical 
antipathy to my mother. The general reader to 
whom motherhood is so sacred will not like to 
read of it. But to suppress the most passionate 
instinct of my nature, would be to suppress the 


12 


Autobiography of a Child 

greater part of my mental and physical suffer- 
ings. As a baby I went into convulsions, I 
am told, if placed in my mother's arms. As a 
child, a girl, nothing has been so dreadful to 
me as the most momentary endurance of her 
touch. 

Once when I was threatened with congestion 
of the brain from over-study, I used to lie in 
frenzied apprehension of the feel of her hand 
on my brow, and she was hardly visible in the 
doorway before a nervous shudder shook my 
frame, and voice was left me to mutter, “Don’t 
touch me! oh, don’t touch me!” Her glance 
was quite as repulsive to me, and I remember 
how I used to feel as if some one were walking 
over my grave the instant those unsmiling blue 
eyes fell upon me. An instinct stronger than 
will, even in advanced girlhood, inevitably com- 
pelled me to change my seat to get without their 
range. 

I recall this feeling, to-day quite dead, as part 
of my childhood’s sufferings, and I wonder that 
the woman who inspired it should in middle life 
appear to me a woman of large and liberal and 
generous character, whose foibles and whose 
rough temper in perspective have acquired 
rather a humorous than an antipathetic aspect. 


13 


Autobiography of a Child 

But children, but girls, are not humorists, and 
they take life and their elders with a lamentable 
gravity. 

On this occasion it was my mother who 
washed my face in new milk. The fragrance 
and coolness of the milk were delicious, if only 
a rougher and coarser hand had rubbed my 
cheeks. 

While still submitting to the process, I stared 
eagerly round the room. There was a grand 
piano in black polished wood, the sofa was blue 
velvet and black wood, and the carpet a very 
deep blue. The air smelt of gillyflowers, and 
there were big bunches in several vases. Yet 
my mother assures me she never met me at 
Cork or elsewhere, never washed my face in new 
milk, is unacquainted with that black piano, the 
blue velvet sofa, and the gillyflowers. 

She admits she did possess a pale green robe 
of poplin with an enormous train, bought for a 
public banquet given to distinguished Ameri- 
cans, but doubts if I ever saw it. Nurse, whom 
I questioned years after, laughed at the idea as 
at a nightmare. 

Still that journey to Cork, Mary Jane’s words 
and my mother’s, the bowl of new milk, the 
green poplin dress, the blue-and-black sofa, the 


14 


Autobiography of a Child 

grand piano, and the gillyflowers, remain the 
strongest haunting vision of those years. 

The first sampler I ever saw was worked by 
Mary Jane. I associate the alphabet in red and 
green wool with shining blue-black curls behind 
a bright-green tracery of foliage upon a blue sky. 

Mary Jane used to sit upon a high bank, and 
work assiduously at her sampler. I thought her 
achievement very wonderful, but I own I never 
could see anything in coloured wools and a 
needle to tempt an imaginative child. So much 
sitting still was dull, and the slow growth of let- 
ters or sheep or flowers exasperating to young 
nerves on edge. My affection for Mary Jane, 
however, was so strong, that I gallantly en- 
deavoured to learn from her, but it was in the 
butterfly season, and there was my friend Johnny 
Burke racing past after a splendid white butter- 
fly. 

What was the letter “B” in alternate stitches 
of red and green in comparison with the cap- 
ture of that butterfly? 

So the child, the poet tells us, is always 
mother of the woman, and not even the sane 
and sobering influence of the years has taught 
me that serious matters are of greater conse- 
quence than the catching of some beautiful but- 


15 


Autobiography of a Child 

terfly. As I bartered childhood to agreeable 
impulses, so have I bartered youth and middle 
age, and if I now am a bankrupt in the face of 
diminishing impulses, who is to blame, after all, 
but perverse and precarious nature? 

What became of Mary Jane I have never 
known. Upon my memory she is eternally im- 
paled: a child of indefinite years from eight to 
eleven, with oily ringlets and clear black eyes, 
pink-cheeked, smiling, over-staid for her age 
(except in the matter of swinging recklessly over 
the pond), working samplers, telling a group of 
unlettered babies exceedingly moral tales, de- 
voted to me and to a snub-nosed doll I abhorred; 
with inexhaustible gifts, including a complete 
knowledge of the views of New York, an en- 
thusiasm for that mysterious being Mary Stuart, 
and an acquaintance with national grievances 
vaguely embodied in a terror of Queen Victoria’s 
power over her Irish subjects. 

She must have grown into a woman of prin- 
ciple and strong views. 


i6 


Chapter III. 


MY BROTHER STEVIE. 

I MUST have been about five when my sover- 
eignty was seriously threatened by the coming 
of Stevie. The ceremony of arrival I do not 
remember. He seems to have started into my 
life like Jack out of his box to kneel for ever 
in his single attitude, — upon a sofa, with his 
elbows on a little table drawn up in front of the 
sofa, and his head resting either on one or both 
palms. 

Do not ask me if he ever slept, lay down, or 
walked as other children. I have no memory of 
him except kneeling thus upon the parlour sofa, 
looking at me or out of the window with beau- 
tiful unearthly eyes of the deepest brown, full 
of passionate pain and revolt. Only for my 
tender nurse did this fierce expression soften 
to a wistfulness still more sad. 

That Stevie’s head was impressive, almost 
startlingly great, even eyes so young as mine 
could discern. Auburn hair the colour of rich 


17 


Autobiography of a Child 

toned wood, that only reveals the underlying 
red when the sun or firelight draws it out, and 
looks like heavy shadow upon a broad white 
forehead when no gleam is upon it; strong 
features not pinched but beautified by disease, 
and a depth and eloquence of regard such as are 
rarely looked for under children's lids. 

The head expressed not pathos so much as 
tragedy. The frame I never saw; I cannot tell 
if Stevie were tall or dwarfed. A tipsy town 
nurse had dropped him down the length of two 
long flights of stairs, and a strong child’s back 
was broken. 

He did not bear his sorrow patiently, I 
fear, but with sullen courage and with a cor- 
rosive silent fretting. He hated me in envy 
of my health and nimble limbs, but what he 
hated still more than even the sight of my viva- 
cious pleasures was any question about his health. 
I never saw a glance so deadly as that with 
which he responded to the kindly hope of Mary 
Jane’s mamma that his back was feeling better. 
If a look could kill, Mary Jane had been mother- 
less on the spot. 

But alas for me! no longer a sole sovereign. 
My serene al fresco kingdom was invaded by 
the darker passions. I did not like Stevie. He 

i8 


Autobiography of a Child 

was a boy a little girl might be sorry for in her 
better moments, but could not love. 

He was querulous whenever I was near, and 
had a spiteful thirst for whatever I had set my 
heart upon. Nurse transferred the better part 
of her affection and attention to him. This was 
as it should be, but I was sadly sore about it in 
those unreasoning times. The little packages of 
round hard sweets in transparent glazed paper, 
pink and violet, that Jim Cochrane used to bring 
me home from the big shop we called the Co. 
(i. e.y Co-operative Store), were now offered to 
Stevie, who took all my old privileges as his 
due. 

Even Mary Jane would sit on the window-sill, 
when she should have been playing with me out- 
side, and gaze at him in prolonged owlish fas- 
cination, drawn by the fierce pain of those suf- 
fering eyes, with their terrible tale of revolt and 
anger. Stevie got into the way of tolerating 
Mary Jane’s society. 

You see she could sit still for hours; she was 
a quiet little body who enjoyed her sampler and 
a book — not a creature of nerves, that raced 
and danced through the hours and was dropped 
into slumber by exhausted limbs. He would 
even let Mary Jane sit at his table and stroke 


19 


Autobiography of a Child 

his white hand with an air of deprecating ten- 
derness, while he stared silently out upon the 
noisy green, where boys and girls were romping 
with straight backs and strong limbs. 

What wonder this poor little fellow with the 
soul of a buccaneer hated us all. Did his favour- 
ite books, read and re-read, not amply reveal 
his tastes, though of these he never spoke? The 
lust of travel, of adventure, of daring deed filled 
his dreaming, and yet he never had the courage 
to ask a soul if he should one day be well and 
fit to meet the glory of active manhood. 

Let remembrance dwell rather with this 
thought than upon the darker side of his temper, 
upon the subtle cruelty of the glance that met 
mine, upon the quiver of baffied desire that 
shook his fine nostrils and the vindictive clutch 
of his bloodless fingers whenever I thoughtlessly 
raced near him. If he gave me my first draught 
of the souFs bitters, I still owe him pity and sym- 
pathy, and I had my pleasures abroad to console 
me for his hate. 

There were the wide fields and the birds, the 
swans on the pond, our friend the applewoman, 
and a band of merry shock-headed playmates 
outside for me. There were the seasons for my 
choosing: the spring lanes in their bloomy fra- 


20 


Autobiography of a Child 

grance ; the warm summer mornings, when 
it was good to sit under trees and pretend to 
be a bewitched palace waiting for the coming 
of the prince, or dabble on the brim of pool 
edges; the autumn luxuriance of fallen leaves, 
which lent the charmed excitement of rustle to 
our path along the lanes : and the frost of winter, 
with the undying joys of sliding and snowballs 
and the fun of deciphering the meaning of Jack 
Frost^s beautiful pictures on the window-panes 
and his tricks upon the branches. 

If Stevie disliked my restlessness, it gave him 
great satisfaction to despise my artistic sensi- 
bilities, and jeer at my lack of learning. I 
adored music, and often amused myself for hours 
at a time crooning out what I must have con- 
ceived as splendid operas, until my voice would 
break upon a shower of tears. 

I naturally thought my wordless singing must 
be very beautiful to move me to such an ecstasy 
of emotion, and I think I enjoyed the tears even 
more than my melancholy howling. But Stevie 
did not. On the first occasion of this odd per- 
formance, he watched me in a convulsion of un- 
joyous laughter. 

‘What an awful fool you are, Angela T’ he 
hissed, when he saw the pathetic tears begin to 


21 


Autobiography of a Child 

roll quickly down my cheeks. I rushed from the 
parlour, and the sweet water of artistic emotion 
turned into the bitter salt of chagrin. 

I must have inherited this tendency from my 
mother’s father, a music-daft Scotsman, who was 
never quite sure whether he was Hamlet or 
Bach. At long intervals he would stroll out 
of town by the Kildare road in an operatic cloak 
and a wide-leafed sombrero, to inspect us. He 
had a notion that I, if left to my own devices, 
might turn out a second Catherine Hayes, and 
after his visits I invariably returned to my dirges 
and cantatas with ardour. 

During the year that Stevie lived at nurse’s, 
visits from the people I significantly called my 
Sunday parents (because, I suppose, I wore my 
Sunday frock and shoes in their honour) were 
more frequent. Golden-haired little ladies, in 
silk frocks and poky bonnets, came and looked 
at me superciliously. The bland hauteur of 
one of those town creatures in superior raiment 
once maddened me to that degree (it was the 
dog-days, no doubt) that I walked up to the chair 
on which she complacently sat, and bit her cheek. 

This naturally afforded my mother an excuse 
for pronouncing me dangerous and prolonging 
my absence from the family circle. 


22 


Autobiography of a Child 

I was, I will admit, a desperate little spitfire, 
full of uncontrollable passion. But I had some 
rudimentary virtue, I am glad to know. I never 
lied, and I was surprisingly valiant for a deli- 
cately-built little girl. 

I cannot remember the period of transition, 
but I suddenly see Stevie in quite a new part. 
The vitality and unfathomable yearning burnt 
themselves out of his eyes, and there was a 
wearied gentleness in them even for me. He 
would watch me quiescently without envy or 
bitterness, and speak to me in slow unfamiliar 
tones. He turned with indifference from his 
books, and seemed to know no active desires. 

‘‘Does your back hurt, Stevie?” I asked, star- 
ing at him solemnly. Even now I can feel the 
moving sadness of his grave look. 

“It always hurts;” and then he added, with a 
ring of his old spite, “but you needn’t be sorry 
for me, Angela.” 

“I am sorry, ever so sorry, Stevie,” I sobbed, 
not knowing why. 

“I wasn’t good to you at all,” he muttered, 
dreamily. 

“Oh, I don’t mind now. I’m fonder of you, 
Stevie. I wish you’d get well, I do. I wouldn’t 
mind being ill to keep you company.” 


23 


Autobiography of a Child 

tlhink Fd be fond of you, Angela, if I got 
well. Would you mind,” he looked at me un- 
easily for help in his awkwardness, and then a 
little pink colour came into his cheek, and he 
spoke so low that it was hard to hear him — '‘I 
think Fd like you to put your arms round my 
neck and kiss me, Angela.” 

It was our first kiss and our last. The im- 
pulsive affection of my embrace pleased him, 
and 'he kept my cheek near his for some mo- 
ments, while in silence we both gazed out upon 
the blotch of dusty green that mingled with the 
pale blue of the sky. I feared to move or even 
wink an eyelid, this new mood of Stevie’s so 
awed me. 

'‘You may have my books and my penknife,” 
said Stevie, breaking the spell. “They’re awful 
nice books. Grandpa gave them to me. I’ll ex- 
plain the pictures to-morrow. But perhaps you 
wouldn’t like boys’ books, Angela,” he said, 
dejectedly, and scanned my face in a humble 
way. 

“Oh yes, I would,” I cried, eagerly. 

“Then you’ll be fonder of me,” he sighed, sat- 
isfied. “Grandpa once read me about a little 
boy that was ill like me, and he had a sister. 
He was very fond of her. He didn’t hate peo- 


24 


Autobiography of a Child 

pie that are well, like me, but I don’t think that’s 
true, Angela. A boy can’t feel good and nice if 
he is always in pain, can he? It wouldn’t be 
so hard for little girls, for they don’t mind sit- 
ting still so much.” 

This, I think, is how he talked, musingly, with 
none of the old vehement revolt of voice and 
glance that still lingers with me as the most 
vivid interpretation of his personality. 

“I can’t believe any boy was ever like that 
queer little fellow. I wonder, if grandpa knew I 
wanted it very much, would he bring out that 
book and read it all over again to me. I want to 
see if it’s reader.” 

I drew my arms away from his neck, and ran 
off screaming for nurse to drive into town, and 
tell grandpa to come and read about a sick little 
boy to Stevie. 

Nurse came to him, ready to do his slightest 
behest. I still see her standing looking at him 
anxiously, and see lifted to her that awful qui- 
etude of gaze, out of a face sharply thinned so 
suddenly. 

‘^Bring me some gingerbread-nuts and lots of 
pipes to blow bubbles with,” he said, and I felt 
the childish request soothed nurse’s alarm. 

“Faith, an’ ye’ll have them galore, my own 


Autobiography of a Child 

boy/’ she cried, “if nurse has to walk barefoot 
to Dublin for them.” 

Mary Jane’s mother came over to stay with us 
while nurse drove off to town. Stevie knelt in 
his eternal position, with his cheek against his 
open palm and cushions piled around him. He 
did not speak, but stared out of the window. 

I went and sat with “Robinson Crusoe” on the 
window-ledge, to watch nurse’s departure and 
wave my hand to her. Not to wave my hand 
from the window and blow kisses to her would 
be to miss the best part of the fun of this un- 
expected incident. 

The world outside rested in the unbroken 
stillness of noon. When nurse was out of sight, 
I turned to acquaint Stevie with the fact. His 
eyes were shut. So he remains in my memory, 
a kneeling statue of monumental whiteness and 
stillness. 

A strange way for a little lad to die! Not a 
sigh, not a stir of hand or body, not a cry, no 
droop of head or jaw. A long, silent stare upon 
the sunny land, lids quietly dropped, and then 
the long unawakeable sleep. To my thinking 
it was an ideal close to a short life of such un- 
rest and pain and misery. It was indeed rest 
robbed of all the horrors of death. 


26 


Autobiography of a Child 

The horror remained for one who loved him, 
and this was no blood relative, but an ignorant 
nurse. Mary Jane’s mamma came to see how 
matters were with the children. Stevie, as I 
thought, still slept, kneeling with his cheek upon 
his palm, and elbow resting on a cushion be- 
tween it and the table. She looked at him 
quickly, flung up her hands, and trembled from 
head to foot. Then she bethought herself of 
me, and ordered me to go and sit with my book 
in the garden, and keep very still. 

That was a long afternoon. I thought nurse 
would never come back. I had looked at all the 
pictures, spoken to each flower, hunted for lady- 
birds, and solaced myself with operatic diversion. 
Now I wanted to go back to Stevie, but the door 
was shut against me and the blinds were all 
drawn down, though it was not night — the sun 
had not even begun to dip westward. 

Judge my delight to catch the sound of wheels 
along the road. I raced down to the gate to 
meet nurse and see all the wonders from 
town. Grandpa was not with her, and she 
came up the little path swinging her basket 
blithely. 

'They knew the book at once, and I’ve got it 
— ’tis by a man called Dickens. Your grandpa 


27 


Autobiography of a Child 

and mamma will come to-morrow and read it. 
They’re giving a grand party to-night. Such a 
power of flowers and jellies and things. But 
the pipes I’ve brought Stevie in dozens and 
gingerbread-nuts galore.” 

Then her eye fell upon the blinded windows, 
and the colour flew from her blooming rustic 
face. She was nearly as white as Stevie inside. 
She flung away her basket, and the pipes, the 
book, and cakes rolled out on the gravel, to my 
amazement. More wonderful still, she broke 
out in wild guttural sounds and whirled around 
in a dance of madness. 

I had never seen a grown person behave so 
oddly, and it enchanted me. I caught her skirt 
and began to spin round too in an ecstasy of 
shrill sympathy. She looked down at me in a 
queer wild way, as if she had never seen me 
before and resented my kindness, and then she 
cast me from her with such unexpected force that 
I fell among the flower-beds, too astounded to 
cry. Decidedly, grown-up people, I reflected, 
are hard to understand. 

I had given up wondering at all the unusual 
things that happened the rest of that day. People 
kept coming and going, and spoke softly, often 
weeping. Nobody paid the least attention to 


28 


Autobiography of a Child 

me, though I repeatedly asserted that I was 
hungry. Then at last a comparative stranger 
took me into the kitchen, and made me a bowl 
of bread and milk. She forgot the sugar, and 
1 was very angry. Big people often do forget 
the essential in a thoughtless way. 

Men, too, came pouring in, and talked in un- 
dertones, looking at me as if I had been naughty. 
I resented those looks quite as much as the un- 
wonted neglect of my small person, and was 
cheered, just upon the point of tears, by the ap- 
pearance of Mary Jane, who invited me to go 
home and sleep with her that night. 

I did not object. I never objected to any fresh 
excitement, and I was fond of Mary Jane’s 
brindled cat. But why did Mary Jane cry over 
me and treat me as a prisoner all next day? 
She managed to keep me distracted in spite of 
her tears, and I slept a second night with the 
brindled cat in my arms, quite happy. 

The second day of imprisonment did not pass 
so well. I was restless, and wanted to see Stevie 
again. I wanted several things that nobody 
seemed to understand, and I moped in a corner 
and wept, miserable and misunderstood. On the 
morning of the third day I could bear my lot no 


29 


Autobiography of a Child 

longer. I scorned Mary Jane’s hollow friend- 
ship, and ran away without hat or jacket. 

Outside nurse’s gate knots of villagers were 
gathered in their best clothes. It looked like 
Sunday. I ran past them and shot in through 
the open hall-door. Nobody saw me, and I 
made straight for Stevie’s room, which he never 
left before noon. I felt a rogue, and smiled in 
pleased recognition of the fact. How glad Stevie 
would be to see me! 

The door was ajar, and I entered cautiously. 
On Stevie’s bed I saw a long queer box with a 
lid laid beside it, and there was quite a quan- 
tity of flowers, and tapers were lit upon a table 
beside the bed. Was Stevie going away? But 
what use were candles when the sun was shining 
as brightly as possible? 

I wanted to see what was inside the box, and 
drew over a chair which enabled me to climb 
upon the bed. Anger shook me like a frenzy. 
To put sick Stevie in a horrid box! Whoever 
heard of such a monstrous thing? It was worse 
than any of the dreadful things the wicked fairies 
did in stories. 

They had taken care, I noted, to pad the box 
with nice white satin to make it soft; and they 
put a pretty new nightgown, with satin and 


30 


Autobiography of a Child 

white flowers all over it, on Stevie. All the 
same, I was not going to be softened by these 
small concessions of cruel people. Stevie I sup- 
posed to be in a bewitched sleep, like the poor 
princess, and I was determined to save him. I 
did not blame nurse. I imagined she was down- 
stairs in enchanted slumber too. I would save 
her afterwards. 

After calling passionately on Stevie, touching 
his face, which was colder than stone, I slipped 
my hands over him down the sides of the box, 
nearly toppling in myself in the energy of labour. 

I see myself now, with pursed lips and frown- 
ing brows, panting in the extremity of haste. 
At last my hands met under the poor narrow 
shoulders, and I proceeded to drag the body 
out of the box. 

I had nearly accomplished the feat, and 
Stevie’s head and one arm hung over the side, 
when the door opened and my stepfather stood 
upon the threshold, dazed with horror, I can 
now believe. His look so terrified me that I 
clambered down from the chair, with an inclina- 
tion to cry. 

'What have they done to Stevie?” I gasped, 
as I saw him gently lift back the dark head and 
desecrated limb. 


31 


Autobiography of a Child 

My stepfather’s eyes brimmed over, and he 
took me into his arms, murmuring vague words 
about heaven and angels, with his wet cheek 
pressed upon mine. This was how I learnt that 
Stevie was dead. 


32 


Chapter IV. 


THE LAST DAYS OF HAPPINESS. 

After the vivid impression of Stevie’s death, 
the days are a blank. Memory only revives upon 
a fresh encounter with my kind. 

A little boy, a friend of my parents, was sent 
down to nurse’s to gain strength by a first-hand 
acquaintance with cows’ milk and the life of the 
fields. Louie was an exciting friend. He had 
the queerest face in the world, like that of an 
old and wrinkled baby’s, for mouth a comical 
slit, and two twinkling grey eyes as small as a 
pig’s. His hair was white, and he grinned from 
morning till night, so that, like the Cheshire cat, 
he rises before me an eternal grin. 

He taught me a delightful accomplishment, 
w'hich afforded me entertainment for several 
months — the repetition of nursery rhymes. He 
possessed a book of this fanciful literature, and 
his private store as well was inexhaustible. 


33 


Autobiography of a Child 

We spent a day of misery together once be- 
cause he could not remember the end of one 
that began — 

“There was an old man who supposed 
The street door was partially closed.” 

For nights I dreamed of that old man, and 
wondered and wondered what happened be- 
cause of his error about the street door. I be- 
held him, grey-haired, with a nightcap on his 
hair, with a dressing-gown wrapped round him 
and held in front by one hand, while the other 
grasped a candle, and the old man looked fear- 
fully over his shoulder at the door. I must have 
seen something to suggest this clear picture, but 
I cannot tell what it was. 

Sometimes his face underwent all sorts of 
transformations, resembled in turn every animal 
I had ever seen and several new monsters I 
was unacquainted with. The eyes changed 
places with the mouth and the ears distorted 
themselves into noses. Before I had done with 
him, he had become quite a wonderful old 
man. 

Our great amusement was to repeat the 
rhymes in a way of our own invention, taking 
turns to be chief and echo. This was how we 
did it: — 


34 


Autobiography of a Child 

Louie. “There was an old man of the 

Angela. Hague 

Louie. Whose ideas were extremely 
Angela. vague. 

Louie. He built a 

Angela. balloon 

Louie. To examine the 

Angela. moon, 

Louie. This curious old man of the 
Angela. Hague.” 

My passionate admiration of the courage of 

the young lady of Norway made me always insist 
on taking the principal part when it came to her 
turn. The neighbours used to drop in of an 
evening, and add the enthusiasm of an audience 
to our own. They were specially proud of me 
as almost native-grown, and my eagerness to 
show off the attractions of the young lady of 
Norway generally resulted in my suppressing 
Louie’s final rhyme. This was what we made 
of it: — 

Angela. “There was a young lady of 
Louie. Norway 

Angela. Who occasionally sat in the 
Louie. doorway; 

Angela. When the door squeezed her 
Louie. flat, 

Angela. She exclaimed, ‘What of 
Louie. that?’ 

Angela. This courageous young lady of 
Louie. Norway.” 


35 


Autobiography of a Child 

Poor Louie, I learnt years afterwards, went to 
the dogs, and was despatched to the Colonies 
by an irate father. He was last heard of as a 
music-hall star at Sydney. 

What sends bright and laughing children forth 
to a life of shame? Louie was the kindest little 
comrade on earth, unselfish, devoted, and of a 
tenderness only surpassed by my nurse’s. Was 
this not proved when I began to droop and pine, 
missing the picture of Stevie kneeling on his 
sofa and staring out of the window? 

I cannot say how long after Stevie’s death 
it was before this want broke out as a fell dis- 
ease. I worried everybody about the absence of 
that tragic face, and plied nurse with unanswer- 
able questions. Neither Mary Jane nor the 
brindled cat, not even the applewoman and her 
tempting trays, nor the pond, nor my new ter- 
rier-pup that often washed my face, had power 
to comfort me. 

I went about disconsolate, and was glad of 
a listener to whom it was all fresh, to discourse 
upon heaven and the queer means that were 
taken to despatch little children thither — an ugly 
box, when wings would be so much prettier. 

Louie listened to me as I, with a burning 
cheek, told the roll of my sorrows and unfolded 
36 


Autobiography of a Child 

my ideas of the mysteries that surrounded me. 
Louie was not an intelligent listener, but he 
made up for his deficiency by an exquisite sense 
of comradeship. He would hold my hand and 
protest in the loudest voice that it was a shame, 
the while I suspect his mind ran on those nursery 
rhymes. But he loved me, there can be on doubt 
of that. I think he meant to marry me when 
we grew up. 

I know when illness and a dreadful cough 
overtook me, he would let me lie on the floor 
with my head in his lap, while the exertion of 
coughing drew blood from my ears and nose. 
This too, he cried, was an awful shame. 

I once saw him watch me through a con- 
vulsion with tears in his eyes, and I was imme- 
diately thrilled with the satisfaction of being so 
interesting and so deeply commiserated. It filled 
me with the same artistic emotion that followed 
my appreciation of the melancholy of my word- 
less singing. 

Deep down in the heart of childhood — even 
bitterly suffering childhood — is this dramatic 
element, this love of sensation, this vanity of 
artist. So much of childhood is, after all, make- 
believe, unconscious acting. We are ill, and we 
cannot help noting the effect of our illness upon 


37 


Autobiography of a Child 

Others. The amount of sympathy we evoke in 
grown-up people is the best evidence of our suc- 
cess as experimental artists with life. Even 
when we cower under a bed to weep away from 
our kind, we secretly hope that God or our 
guardian angel is watching us and feeling in- 
tensely sorry for us; and our finest conception 
of punishment of cruel elders is their finding us 
unexpectedly dead, and their being consumed 
with remorse for their flagrant injustice to such 
virtue as ours. 

Who can limit the part as admiring audience 
a child condemns his guardian angel to play? 
For him, when humanity is cold and unobservant 
— as humanity too often is in the eyes of child- 
hood — does he so gallantly play the martyr, the 
hero, the sufferer in proud silence. For his ad- 
miration did a little sister of mine once put her 
hand in the fire. She thought it was heroic, like 
the early Christians, and hoped her guardian 
angel would applaud, while common elders 
shouted in angry alarm. 

Ah, never prate so idly of the artlessness and 
the guilelessness of children. They are as full 
of vanity and innocent guile and all the arts and 
graces as the puppies and kittens we adore. 

How much, for instance, had the hope of 
38 


Autobiography of a Child 

praise and admiration to do with Louie’s mag- 
nanimous kindness in that affair of the gipsies? 
I lay ill and exhausted from coughing on the 
sofa when he rushed in, panting with eagerness, 
to tell me that the gipsies had arrived over-night 
and were camped on the green, where they had 
a merry-go-round. I had never seen a gipsy, 
but Mary Jane had, and she often told me the 
most surprising things about them — 'how dark 
they were, how queerly they spoke, and how 
romantic they looked, like strange people in 
story-books. Of course I pined to see them, and 
the thought that I was chained to my sofa, when 
outside the world was all agog, and rapture 
awaited happier children upon the green, filled 
my eyes with tears. 

I turned my face to the wall and wept bitterly. 
My heart was heavy with the sombre hate of 
Cain, and when I looked gloweringly at the blest 
little Abel by my side, he looked quite as mis- 
erable as my evil, envious heart could desire. 
His comic face underwent a variety of contor- 
tions before finally he made up his mind to blurt 
out an offer to forego the pleasures of the green, 
and stay with me. 

But I was not a selfish child, and generosity 
always spurred me to emulation. Besides, I was 


39 


Autobiography of a Child 

already greatly comforted by the extent of 
Louie’s sympathy, so I ordered him off to see 
the gipsies, and come back and tell me what a 
merry-go-round was like. 

Still I did not mend, in spite of all nurse’s 
care and tenderness, and it was decided to re- 
move me to town. This was the decision of my 
stepfather, who was probably nervous since 
Stevie had dropped out of life in that quick and 
quiet way. 

How well I remember the last day among all 
my dear friends! Mary Jane, Louie, and I, hand 
in hand, walked about all our favourite spots. 
The applewoman gave me an entire trayful of 
crab-apples, and wished I might come back with 
my rosy cheeks. I asked her to kiss me, and 
then she thrust a bun into my hand, and said 
huskily, “God bless you, my little lady!” 

We went across to Mary Jane’s, and I had a 
conviction that my heart was broken. I was go- 
ing away into the land of the ogres and witches, 
and though I should probably be happy at last, 
since all things come right in children’s tales, 
vague terror held me at the prospect of the un- 
known trials that awaited me. Mary Jane’s 
mamma gave me raspberry vinegar and my tears 
mingled with the syrup. I asked to be let look 


40 


Autobiography of a Child 

once more at the views of New York, and then 
asked her if she would feel very sorry at my 
death. 

They were still consoling me, and I was sob- 
bing wildly in the arms of Mary Janets mamma, 
while Louie relieved his stricken soul by pro- 
testing repeatedly that “it was an awful shame,” 
when nurse and Jim Cochrane, in his Sunday 
clothes, came to carry me off to the car. All the 
village flocked to see me off, and breathed cor- 
dial love and benediction upon my departure. 

Kindly Irish peasants, with their pretty speech 
and pretty manners! Is there any other race 
whose common people can throw such warmth 
and natural grace into greetings and farewell? 
Big-hearted, foolish, emotional children, upon 
whose sympathetic faces, at their ugliest, still 
play the smiles and frowns, the lights and 
shadows of expressive and variable childhood. 
How they cheered and soothed me with their 
kind words, their little gifts, their packages 
of comfits and posies, a blue-and-white mug 
with somebody else^s name in gilt letters upon it, 
and a tiny plate with a dog in a circle of fascinat- 
ing white knobs. 

This was the end of my brief sovereignty. 
Though of those old associations, for which I 


41 


Autobiography of a Child 

was destined to yearn so passionately many a 
year, memory may have become so dim as to 
leave only a trace of blurred silhouettes upon 
an indistinct background emerging from a haze 
of multiplied experience, I like to think that I 
owe to that bright start the humour and cour- 
age that have served to help me through a 
clouded life. 


42 


Chapter V. 


MARTYRDOM. 

It would seem that happiness imprints itself 
more clearly and more permanently upon the 
mind than misery. Beyond a sense of enduring 
wretchedness, I can recall very little of my home 
life. 

My sisters had a big play-room at the top of 
the house. Here they had ladders, which they 
used to rest in the four corners and climb up, 
pretending they were climbing up great moun- 
tains. They were much more learned than I 
in the matter of pretence and games. They 
knew all sorts of things, and could pretend any- 
thing. They had been to the pantomime, and 
could dance like the fairies. One of them had a 
brilliant imagination, and told lovely stories. In 
the matter of invention I have never since met 
her equal in children of either sex; but she was 
apt to carry experiment too far, for reading of 
somebody that hanged himself by tying a hand- 
kerchief round his neck and attaching it to a nail 


43 


Autobiography of a Child 

on the wall, she immediately proceeded to test 
the efficacy of the method upon the person of a 
pretty stepsister of four, whom she worshipped. 

The child was beginning to turn colour al- 
ready at the moment of rescue, and then fol- 
lowed the solitary instance of my stepfather’s 
punishing one of us. 

But my sisters were not kinder to me than my 
mother. I was an alien to them, and I loved 
strangers. They could not understand a sensi- 
tiveness naturally morbid, and nurtured upon 
affection. It was impossible that they could 
escape the coarsening influence of my mother’s 
extraordinary treatment and neglect of them. 

Left to grow up without love or moral train- 
ing, cuffed and scolded, allowed illimitable lib- 
erty from dawn to dark, they were more like 
boys than girls. They never kissed one another 
or any one else. They were straightforward, 
honest, rather barbarous in their indifference to 
sentiment, deeply attached to each other under a 
mocking manner, vital, and surprisingly vivid 
and individual for children. There was not a 
particle of vanity or love of dress amongst the 
lot, though beauty was their common heritage. 
Their fault was that they never considered the 
sensibilities of a less breezy nature; that they 


44 


Autobiography of a Child 

were rough, unkind, for the fun of the thing, and 
could never understand the suffering they in- 
flicted upon me. 

One of their fancies, seeing how I shrank from 
hardness of touch or look or voice, was to teach 
me how to run away from a ghost. 

It was a very high house, with several flights 
of stairs, and two of these inquisitors would 
take me between them, and tear me at a running 
pace down the whole length of stairs, my heels 
lifted from the ground, and only the tips of my 
toes bruised against each stair. At night I 
would go to bed aching with pain and terror, and 
sob myself to sleep, yearning for the faces and 
sights and sounds that had passed out of my life. 

Ah, what tears I shed in that strange home! 
To have cried in childhood as I cried then, in- 
cessantly and for months, sometimes for the 
greater part of the day under a bed, that none of 
these mocking young creatures might see me 
and laugh at me; to have stood so intolerably 
alone among so many, without a hand to dry my 
eyes, a kiss to comfort me, a soft breast against 
which I could rest my tired little head and sob 
out my tale of sorrow, — this is to start perma- 
nently maimed for the battle of life. What com- 
pensation can the years bring us for such in- 


45 


Autobiography of a Child 

justice? Could any possible future paradise 
make up to us for infancy in hell? 

There are faces that stand out upon memory 
with some kindness in them for a pitiable little 
outcast. Chiefly, of course, my stepfather, who 
was as serviceably good to me as a man^s un- 
reasoning terror of a woman’s temper permitted 
him to be. He saved me from many a cruel 
beating, and when I seemed more than usually 
miserable, he would, with an air of secrecy and 
guilt that charmed me, himself help to fasten on 
my hat and little coat, and carry me out upon 
his business calls. 

They used to represent me to him as a danger- 
ous small devil, describing my outbursts of fury 
but suppressing the provocation; and I once 
heard him exclaim angrily — ‘T am sick of these 
complaints of Angela’s temper. When she is 
with me she is better behaved and gentler than 
any of them. You can twist an angel into a 
devil if you worry and ill-use it.” 

I know now that he suffered for his partisan- 
ship of me, and that he forsook my cause at last 
from sheer weariness of spirit and flesh. He 
thought it better for his own peace to leave me to 
the mercies of my mother, concluding probably 
that I should not be worse off. 


46 


Autobiography of a Child 

Our home must have resembled the American 
man-of-war in the vicinity of which, the French 
Admiral wrote, nothing was heard from morn- 
ing till night but the angry voices of the officers 
and the howling of trounced sailors. Up-stairs 
in their play-room the children were happy 
enough, but to venture down-stairs was the 
hardihood of mouse in the neighbourhood of 
lion. One or the other, for no reason on earth, 
but for the impertinent or irrational obvious- 
ness of her existence, was seized by white ma- 
ternal hands, dragged by the hair, or banged 
against the nearest article of furniture. My 
mother never punished her children for doing 
wrong; she was simply exasperated by their 
inconceivable incapacity to efface themselves 
and 'die low.” To show themselves also in her 
vicinity was an intolerable offence which called 
for instant chastisement. 

Servants have been known to fly to the rescue. 
Once when I came home from a walk, one of the 
nurses complained in my mother’s hearing that 
I had wilfully splashed my boots with mud. In- 
stantly I was grasped, and the mystery to me 
to-day is how I survived such treatment. One 
of the servants, a delicate, fair young man, called 
Gerald, rushed up-stairs, scarlet with indigna- 


4 ? 


Autobiography of a Child 

tion, and tore me from my mother’s hands. I 
have forgotten what he said, but he gave her 
notice on the spot in order to express himself 
more freely. 

Once, again, I was rescued by a young lady 
in a silk gown of many shades. Her face is a 
blank to me, but I distinctly remember the 
green and purple lights of her shot-silk gown, 
and the novel sound of her name, Anastasia 
Macaulay. She had come to lunch that day, 
and had taken a fancy to me, which was quite 
enough to excite my mother. The scene is 
indistinct. I sat on Anastasia’s lap, playing with 
her watch-chain, and suddenly I was on the 
floor, with smarting face and aching back. 
Anastasia saved me from worse. She sent me 
a picture-book and a doll, but never entered the 
house again. 


48 


Chapter VI. 


GRANDFATHER CAMERON. 

The unhappiest little child that ever drew breath 
has immediate compensations between the dark 
hours undreamed of by elders. One of the per- 
sons that lent the relief of sparkle to those 
sombre months, and by whose aid I wandered 
blithely enough down the sunny avenues of 
imagination, which, like a straight road running 
into the sky, lead to Paradise, was my Scottish 
grandfather. 

Grandpapa was a sombre-visaged little gentle- 
man, not in the least like his formidable daugh- 
ter. He had very dark eyes, and he often as- 
sured me that Stevie got his beautiful red-brown 
hair from him. I needed the assurance pretty 
frequently, for grandpapa’s hair was white. He 
proudly drew my attention to the fact that there 
was not a bald spot, however. 

In all ordinary matters of existence, grandpapa 
was of a happy facility. He tolerated every error, 
every crime, I believe, except a false note or an 


49 


Autobiography of a Child 

inferior taste in music. He loved me, not be- 
cause of the accuracy of my ear, for I had none 
to speak of, but because of my instinctive pas- 
sion for music. Still, in middle life, I can say 
there never has been for me a grief that could 
resist the consolation of music well interpreted. 

If grandpapa found me in a corner white and 
dejected, he asked no questions, — he wished to 
be in ignorance of his daughter's domestic af- 
fairs, which was the reason, I suppose, he so 
sedulously avoided the society of my stepfather 
— but he took me off with him to hear music or 
singing somewhere. In winter he took me to the 
pantomime, and we sat in the pit, and he in- 
dulged me with an orange to suck. 

In the Dublin season he took me to the Opera 
or the Opera-Bouffe with equal readiness. 
Sometimes there were morning or afternoon 
concerts, and I sat out with exemplary gravity 
sonatas and concerts or part-singing, and woke 
up to genial comprehension of the ballads and 
simple melodies. 

Grandpapa had one great charm. He never 
spoke to me as a child, and I rarely understood 
the tenth of his talk. That was why, no doubt, 
as a personage grandpapa appealed so delight- 
fully to my imagination. He was a mystery, a 


50 


Autobiography of a Child 

problem, a permanent excitement. A month or 
a year — perhaps, to be more accurate, a month — 
would elapse without my seeing him, and then 
suddenly he would again enter the chaos of 
dreams and visions, a smiling dark-eyed old gen- 
tleman, with a long black cloak flung round his 
shoulder and a slouched felt hat that left revealed 
his abundant white hair. 

He would place a finger on his lip and say, 
‘‘Hush !” so mysteriously, looking round the 
room. How well I, who lived in such fear of my 
mother’s presence, understood that attitude and 
look. 

I have since been assured that grandpapa was 
a harmless lunatic. If so, he made lunacy more 
attractive to a child than sanity. 

“Hush! I have that to say to you, child, 
which common ears may not hear. These peo- 
ple call me Cameron. But, Angela, my real 
name is Hamlet. I was born at Elsinore. I will 
take you to Elsinore some day. It is far away 
in a country called Denmark. You yourself, 
Angela, look like a Dane, with your yellow hair 
and blue eyes. Come, there is a concert at Earls- 
fort Terrace. They play Bach. I will take you.” 

Could anything be more calculated to win a 
child’s esteem and reverence than this assertion 


51 


Autobiography of a Child 

that the world knew him by a false name ? — that 
he was really quite another person from the per- 
son they believed him to be? Then, what son- 
orous words, Hamlet, Elsinore! Denmark I 
liked less — it sounded more like an everyday 
place — ^but Elsinore was as good as a fairy-tale 
in its awful beauty. 

I asked him if you went in a ship over the sea 
to Elsinore, as Mary Jane told me you went to 
America; and when he nodded and said “Yes,” 
I got to imagine there was no common sunlight 
on the sea as the ship crossed it to Elsinore, but 
the lovely white light I had seen at the theatre 
when the fairies danced, and all the people in the 
ship wore beautiful garments of white and green 
gauze, and there was soft music all the way, and 
the water shone like silver. 

What I could not understand was why I should 
be a Dane because my eyes were blue, when 
grandpapa’s, who was so obviously more of a 
Dane than I, were black. But grandpapa always 
frowned, and an odd flame shot into his mild 
glance, if you asked him questions. 

He gave you facts, and expected you to make 
what you could of them. He was unreasonably 
proud, I thought, of his Scottish blood, all the 
same. He was a Highlander, he said, while my 


52 


Autobiography of a Child 

grandmother, he explained contemptuously, was 
a Glasgow lass. My uncle Douglas, he added, 
favoured his side, while my mother was a blonde 
Ferguson. Pity it was an intelligent little girl 
like me did not take more after the Camerons; 
but I had my uncle Douglas’s nose, and with a 
Cameron nose I need never fear the future. 

This was surely an excess of faith on my 
grandfather’s side not justified by experience. 
He had been only saved from the poorhouse by 
a thrifty and judicious if hard-hearted wife, while 
my splendid uncle Douglas, with his curly head 
of Greek god, had wandered from debt through 
every expensive caprice, and was drowned sail- 
ing a little pleasure-boat on one of the Killarney 
lakes at the inappropriate age of twenty-four. 

The Cameron nose has done as little for his 
young brother, my uncle Willie. I have always 
loved the image I have made to myself of my 
boy-uncle Willie, chiefly, I suppose, because of 
his brilliant promise and early death ; but largely, 
I believe, because not only grandpapa Cameron, 
but others who remember him, tell me I resem- 
ble him in character and feature. 

They say it was his death, coming so soon 
after the blow of uncle Douglas’s doom, that 
turned my grandfather’s brain. Willie had been 


53 


Autobiography of a Child 

articled to a well-known architect, who, being 
musical like my grandfather, was interested in 
his musical friend's bright-faced and witty lad, 
with about as much knowledge of music as a 
healthy puppy. This lamentable deficiency, how- 
ever, brought about no disastrous clash between 
master and pupil. 

The distinguished architect loved Willie Cam- 
eron for his good-humour, his industry, his 
quickness, and his impromptu jingling rhymes. 
He made everything rhyme with a delicious 
comic absurdity, even the technical terms of his 
profession, and in consequence no one was jeal- 
ous of the master’ s preference for his funny 
Scottish pupil. You see, he was so much more 
of an Irish than a Scottish lad. Born on Irish 
soil, he seems to have inherited the best of native 
virtues, and was universally beloved. Even his 
eldest sister, who never sinned on the side of 
tenderness, could not speak of uncle Willie with- 
out a smile. 

So there were universal congratulations when 
Willie, barely of age, got his first commission. 
No one accused the architect of favouritism, 
though the first commission of a son could not 
have been of greater moment to him. Uncle 
Willie posted triumphantly off to the country. 


54 


Autobiography of a Child 

and the master told him to telegraph for his 
presence in the event of doubt or difficulty. The 
season was wet, and uncle Willie reached his inn 
that night drenched and shivering. They put 
him into damp sheets. The next day was no 
drier, and uncle Willie drove off on a car in the 
rain. It was his last drive alive. Ten days later 
what remained of him was driven to the ceme- 
tery amid plumes and crape and white flowers. 

It was curious that while grandpapa Cameron 
was always ready to speak of his handsome son 
Douglas, of Willie, whom he loved best, he only 
spoke to me once, — that was when he showed me 
an indefinite boy’s picture, and curtly told me it 
was my uncle Willie’s portrait, and added, 
dreamily, that I was the only one of his grand- 
children who resembled Willie. 

That fact, perhaps, had more to do than my 
musical proclivities with his preference for me. 
He would give me five-shilling pieces from time 
to time, and beg me ''not to mention it.” I took 
the pieces gratefully, pleased with their bright- 
ness and largeness; but I own I found pennies 
more useful. A child can buy almost anything 
for a penny, but the only use of a silver five- 
shilling piece seemed to me to be able to look at 
it from time to time. Had I known anything 


55 


Autobiography of a Child 

of arithmetic, I might have calculated how many 
pennies were contained in these big silver pieces, 
and have changed them for an inexhaustible 
store of my favourite coin. 

But I was not clever enough to think of this, 
and by the time I was sent .^cross the sea to 
school in Warwickshire a year later, I had as 
many as six five-shilling pieces in a box, which 
then did stout service in supplying cakes and 
sweets on the scarce occasions I was allowed to 
make such needful investments. 

Grandpapa Cameron lived in a little cottage 
out of town, with a long back-garden, where he 
spent his time cultivating roses. He had a dis- 
agreeable olid cook and a red-nosed gardener, 
and he saw no society but a couple of priests, 
who took it in turn to drop in of an evening to 
play cribbage. 

On Sunday he went to the one church where 
Mozart^s and Beethoven’s masses were sung. 
Once a new hardy organist with a fanciful 
French taste introduced Gounod. 

My grandfather’s face changed. He cocked 
an indignant ear, turned abruptly in his seat fac- 
ing the altar, and looked long and angrily up at 
the choir. The horrid and sentimental strains 
of Gounod continued, and, unable to bear it any 
56 


Autobiography of a Child 

longer, my grandfather clapped his hat over his 
eyes, with a disregard for the religious prejudices 
of his neighbours no less brutal than the new 
organist’s disregard for his musical sensibilities. 

He walked out of church, and meditated upon 
his protest for a week. When I mention my be- 
lief that my grandfather had only become a con- 
vert from Scottish Presbyterianism to Roman 
Catholicism because of Mozart’s and Beethoven’s 
masses, it will be recognised what a desperately 
serious matter for him was this impertinent in- 
troduction of light French music into church. 

He succeeded in gathering a cluster of musical 
maniacs, one of whom was his friend the dis- 
tinguished architect. The four planted them- 
selves, with arms folded and furious purpose in 
their eyes, not in the least like Christians come 
to Sunday prayers, but like heroes bent upon 
showing an uncompromising front to injury. 
They heard in silence the opening roll of the or- 
gan, then the thin sweetness of Monsieur 
Gounod’s religious strains filled the church, and 
the faithful sat up to listen to the Kyrie Eleison. 

A distinct and prolonged hiss burst from the 
lips of the four musical maniacs, and my grand- 
father began to pound his stick upon the floor 
with an eloquence that left no one in doubt as 


57 


Autobiography of a Child 

to how he would treat the organist’s head if he 
had it within reach. The officiating priests 
glanced round in surprise and astonishment. 
People rubbed their eyes, and wondered if they 
were dreaming. 

There sat the four maniacs, hissing, booing, 
knocking their sticks on the floor, and “ohing” 
as they do in the House of Commons. Surprise 
was effaced in consternation, and a priest came 
down to the miscreants from the altar. 

‘‘Let that fellow stop his French nonsense and 
we’ll stop too,” shouted my grandfather. 'T’ve 
been coming to this church for the past twenty- 
five years, and during that time have paid bigger 
fees than any of my neighbours. Why? Be- 
cause there was a decent feeling for music here. 
Because you respected yourselves and gave us 
the best. But if you’re going to degrade your- 
selves and follow an ignoble fashion and adopt 
French fads — well, sir, I swear I’ll wreck the 
church — I will indeed.” 

The fight ended in my grandfather’s defeat, 
and he never put his foot again into church. 
He carried his indignation so far as to insult 
an old French acquaintance. Monsieur Pruvot, 
the manager of a large wine house. Still sore 
upon the triumph of Gounod, he was accosted 
58 


Autobiography of a Child 

affably by Monsieur Pruvot, who cried out to 
him, waving his hat — 

“How do you do, my dear Monsieur Cam- 
erone?’’ 

“My name’s Cameron, and Pm Mister, none 
of your damned French Monsieurs, Mr. Pruvot,” 
roared my grandfather, pronouncing the mute t of 
the Frenchman’s name with a vicious emphasis. 

It is easy to imagine the amazement of the 
Frenchman, in ignorance of the Beethoven- 
Gounod episode, and who until then had always 
found my grandfather a genial and inoffensive 
neighbour. He made, by way of insinuating 
concessions to wrath, a complimentary remark 
upon “this charming little town of Dublin,” pro- 
nouncing it in the French way. 

“We call it Dublin, sir. Yes, I’ve no doubt 
it is a finer town than your native Bordox. I 
see no reason, sir, why we in Dublin should treat 
your town with a courtesy you, residing here, 
deny ours. If you can’t learn to say Dublin, we 
may well decline to say Bordeaux. A very good 
morning, Mr. Pruvot.” 

Poor grandpapa Cameron! This was his last 
battle on earth, either in the interests of Beetho- 
ven or Dublin. A few days later he was found in 
bed with his face to the wall — dead. 


59 


Chapter VII. 


PROFILES OF CHILDHOOD. 

The flow of the day in my city home is lost for 
me. But pictures and portraits stand out, some- 
times blurred, sometimes surprisingly distinct, 
upon a confused background. There was food 
enough for curiosity and dreaming in the pauses 
of suffering. I must have lived for several days 
in an enchanted world solely by the single 
glimpse I had of my godfather. 

He had sent me a present of a book about 
cocks and hens, largely illustrated. I was sitting 
in the store-room poring over it in the dreary 
society of Mrs. Clement, the new housekeeper. 
The previous one, Mrs. Dudley, I remember 
vaguely as a stern unsympathetic person, with 
crimped iron-grey hair under a voluminous cap 
trimmed with puce ribbons. She once forced 
me to swallow a Gregory-powder in a delusive 
snare of black-currant jam. I must have swal- 
lowed medicines before and since, and yet the 
taste and smell and look of that nauseous pow- 


6o 


Autobiography of a Child 

der are still with me whenever my mind reverts 
to those days. Hence my delight when I learned 
that Mrs. Dudley was going away, and my cor- 
dial welcome of her successor, Mrs. Clement. 

“So she’s in here,” somebody cried, rapping 
with a stick upon the door ajar. 

I looked up from my book and saw a wonder- 
ful sight, of which I was afterwards vividly re- 
minded in a French school by a picture of the 
famous “Postilion de Longjumeau,” a jaunty 
figure with a pointed black beard and a tall 
wide-brimmed hat on one side. He bore him- 
self gallantly, wore top-boots, a long coat with 
several little capes to it, and carried a smart rid- 
ing-whip in his hand. This was my godfather. 

I had never seen him before, and to my last- 
ing regret I have never seen him since. He was 
out in ’48, was proscribed, and had wandered 
about strange lands. He died in China, having 
first sent my mother a pretty case of Imperial 
tea, which she distributed in minute portions to 
all her friends, measuring the tea out with a 
small silver egg-cup. As fast as each consumed 
her portion, she returned for another, and as my 
mother had always a greater pleasure in giving 
than in receiving, my godfather’s present was 
soon exhausted. 


61 


Autobiography of a Child 

I remember being swung up in the air and 
shrieking in pretended fright, for children, sen- 
sational and dramatic little creatures, must per- 
suade themselves there is an element of peril and 
adventure in their tamest diversions. Not to 
imagine oneself afraid is to miss the peculiar zest 
of enjoyment. 

When I was seated gravely on his knee, my 
godfather asked me to spell out a few lines of 
his book. 

“Cocks and hens — eh? Just suit a little girl 
from the country,” he laughed, helping me to 
hold the book. 

“I had a little dog at Mamma Cochrane’s. I 
liked it better than cocks and hens,” I protested 
meekly. 

“Wants a dog now, does she? Queer little 
woman! She’s still too pale, Mrs. Clement, 
much too pale and thin. Fretting for her 
Mamma Cochrane, I suppose. Well, I’ll see if I 
can’t get her a nice dog with curly hair, that’ll 
cry ‘Bow-wow’ when you pull its tail. Know 
where China is, missy?” 

I had heard of a china doll, and my Mamma 
Cochrane had two beautiful black-and-white 
china dogs. I supposed at once that China was 
a land where the dogs and dolls were all of china. 


62 


Autobiography of a Child 

and I wondered if the people were of china too. 
My godfather laughed as only a big man with a 
beard seems to be able to laugh. I was sure you 
could hear him down in the hall and up in the 
nursery. It was very comforting, that loud 
laugh, and I became instantly communicative, 
and told him all I knew about America and New 
York. He said it took a much bigger boat to 
go to China, which was farther off than New 
York, and that there were crocodiles in the rivers 
that ate men, and there was so much sunshine 
that the people were quite yellow. 

After that, whenever it was unusually sunny, 
I was safe to astonish somebody by saying I 
supposed it was always like that in China. 
Somehow, the image of my jovial godfather was 
melted in a great glare of yellow light, through 
which yellow faces came and went, up and down 
long rivers, where unknown monsters, under- 
stood to be crocodiles, tossed about in a ruthless 
quest of man. 

Mrs. Clement, the housekeeper, is another 
portrait that stands out in luminous relief from 
a crowd of unremembered faces. Her dress was 
seemingly as unalterable as a uniform. It con- 
sisted of a black silk gown, very wide at the base 
and gathered in at a slim waist, a white lawn 

63 


Autobiography of a Child 

fichu trimmed with delicate lace, and fastened 
with a gold brooch containing the features of a 
young man with a dark moustache. 

I never dared to ask her who the young man 
was. She was kind to me, but she kept me at 
arm’s-length by her terrible sadness, and infant 
curiosity was the last thing she encouraged, Her 
face was pale, her thin yellow hair was pale, and 
her blue eyes were pale. Those faded hues 
suited the melancholy of her smile and regard. 

Seeing me persecuted and unhappy, she took 
me under her protection, and would let me sit 
for hours at her feet in the storeroom, while she 
mended linen. 

I read to her, and when I was tired of reading 
I told her stories of my past. Like grown-up 
mourners, it relieved me to talk of my sorrow 
and describe the paradise down there beside the 
pond and the applewoman’s stall. 

She listened with mild interest, and I was not 
so engrossed in my own troubles as not to re- 
mark the sadness of Mrs. Clement. The children 
up-stairs were sure she had committed some 
dreadful murder, and was brooding in remorseful 
reminiscence. They did not like her, because she 
once scolded them for their treatment of me ; but 
nothing they could say would induce me to think 
64 


Autobiography of a Child 

ill of my melancholy friend, and I continued to 
sit at her feet and watch her in wonder and awe. 

Her niece Eily came into our service shortly 
afterwards. She had a beautiful fresh face like a 
wild-flower, made up of sweet dark-blue eyes, a 
blossom of a mouth, and morning hues upon her 
cheek. She was a girl made to beguile sense and 
sternness, and transform the lion to a lamb. 
Everybody immediately loved her, she had such 
a delicious way of saying “Ah, sure !” and lifting 
up a pair of the most Irish of eyes in bewitching 
appeal. 

My parents adopted her as a sort of daughter, 
and a mere hint of a lover at her heels was 
enough to wake the Quixote in my stepfather. 
They married her afterwards to a promising 
young Englishman, my father giving her away 
and my mother supplying the trousseau. 

The Englishman was so enamoured of all 
things Irish that he gave the most flagrantly 
Hibernian names to his children, in opposition 
to Eily’s romantic tastes, who adored every out- 
of-the-way name of fiction. When I met them, 
years afterwards, his affected drawl and pretty 
suspicion of lisp managed to give a foreign 
charm to our common name “Paddy,” by which 
the eldest boy was called. 

65 


Autobiography of a Child 

Eily’s face was just the same wild-flower, a 
little faded and drawn, and “Ah, sure !” was still 
on the tip of her tongue in all the beguiling 
glamour of Erin. But what a sad change ! Tears 
looked fatally near the surface, and the smile was 
deprecating and anxious. 

She had fallen from petted servitude into 
troubled servitude, and longed for the clatter of 
her aunt’s household keys among the linen and 
china and preserve-presses of the storeroom. 
She longed for my stepfather’s cheery “Well, 
Eily, little puss,” and instead had to listen to an 
exacting husband’s complaints of her deficiencies 
as housekeeper and sick-nurse. He had married 
a bird, and grumbled incessantly because it 
lacked the solid capacities of a cow. 

“And your aunt, Eily?” I asked. 

“Poor aunt died long ago. She never recov- 
ered the death of her only child, Frank, who was 
drowned going out to America.” 

So the young man in the brooch was Mrs. 
Clement’s son, after all, and her melancholy, that 
had so puzzled my childhood, was not the gloom 
of remorse but the stamp of a common bereave- 
ment. 

By the side of my grandfather’s avenue of 
rose-trees ran a neighbour’s garden. My grand- 

66 


Autobiography of a Child 

father was on nodding terms with his neigh- 
bour; but there sometimes came a bright-faced 
lad with a flaxen down upon his upper lip. His 
name caught my fancy, and I thought a fairy 
prince could not have a finer one. It now repre- 
sents to the world a figure so very different from 
the vague but pleasant profile memory likes to 
dwell upon, that I permit myself to doubt if that 
kind boy and the O’Donovan Rossa of New 
York can be the same person. 

The stripling I recall seems to me to have 
been eternally singing or whistling. I specially 
remember one song he was fond of — “Love 
among the Roses.” 

He would look across the low hedge and sing 
out, “Where’s my little wife?” I kept it as a 
delightful secret from all the world that I was 
married to a boy called O’Donovan Rossa. The 
world is a cold confidant in such delicate matters, 
and has a way of looking as if it did not take 
little children seriously. 

But O’Donovan Rossa had a little sister of his 
own whom he loved devotedly, so he knew all 
about little girls and their ways, and appeared 
to understand my conversation. So few grown- 
up people do understand the conversation of 
children, and children know this. 

67 


Autobiography of a Child 

He would spring over the hedge just like a 
mythical personage, and tumble unexpectedly on 
the grass-plot beside me, and my daisy-chains 
were matter of absorbing interest to him. Then 
what stories he had about blue dragon-flies, 
humming-birds, and bewitched crows! You may 
imagine if I looked forward to visits to grand- 
papa Cameron’s cottage, with such a prospect- 
ive attraction, 

I did not disdain the rougher friendship of 
Dennis, my grandfather’s gardener. He was a 
cheery individual with a very red face. He once 
gave me an orange and a penny when I arrived 
with cheeks and eyelids swollen from crying, 
with a conviction that I could bear my sorrows 
no longer. I ate my orange, and suddenly the 
world seemed brighter, and when I went off 
alone to purchase a pennyworth of crab-apples 
at a fruit-shop hard by, I began to take pleasure 
at the thought of to-morrow. 

I was further consoled by one of grandpapa’s 
shining five-shilling pieces, and then Dennis 
called me to fetch him a tool, shouting, “Look 
sharp now, and do something for your living,” 
and I was so enchanted that all sense of desola- 
tion and ill-usage left me. 

It is so easy to make a child happy that it is a 


68 


Autobiography of a Child 

mystery to me how the art is not universal with 
grown-up persons. 

Among the blurred memories of days so re- 
mote is a ball given in the big town house. The 
excitement could not but reach us up-stairs be- 
neath the stars. The nurse and housemaid were 
equally aflame, and stood watching the guests 
from the corner of the topmost landing, that 
commanded a glimpse of the drawing-room 
lobby. The rustle of silk and the sort of per- 
fumed chatter that belongs to gatherings in full 
dress reached us, broken and vague like the 
beautiful fancies of dreams. Our little feet pat- 
tered with yearning to be down below in the 
thick of social pleasures, and we shouted out 
our recognition of each side face as a guest 
crossed the lobby. It was not the brilliant assort- 
ment of silks and satins and laces, the gleam of 
jewelled array, or the chatter that intoxicated 
me ; it was the first blast of music that rolled up 
to us, and the penetrating charm of the fiddles. 

I was always less looked after than the others, 
and watching my opportunity, I slipped down- 
stairs in my nightdress ; I felt I must hear those 
fiddles nearer, and see how people looked when 
they danced. Mrs. Clement saw me a few steps 
above the drawing-rooms, and wanted to carry 
69 


Autobiography of a Child 

me back to bed; but I prayed so hard for one 
look, that she took me into her arms, and, skirt- 
ing the lobby, went in on tip-toe to the card- 
room, at the top of the drawing-rooms, where 
several persons were playing at little tables. 
Some of the guests looked up at the melancholy 
lady in black silk with the little child in its night- 
dress, staring in bewilderment at them. But 
Mrs. Clement placed her finger on her lips, and 
they smiled at me and continued their play. 

They were playing “11 Bacio,’^ and even now 
I can never hear that tinkling waltz without a 
throb. It brought tears to my eyes then, and all 
night it formed the accompaniment of my 
dreams. The only couple I clearly saw in that 
paradise of colour, light, scent, and sound was 
my stepfather, who whirled past us with a tall 
dark girl in amber satin, who was smiling most 
radiantly as she danced. 

This girl springs into my pictures of child- 
hood in an odd inconsequent way. She was very 
handsome, of the sparkling brunette type, with 
white teeth, and hard bright eyes as black as the 
hair that rippled low down on either temple, and 
was caught under the ear in an old-fashioned 
bunch of ringlets. She was under my mother’s 
protection, who was very kind and generous to 


70 


Autobiography of a Child 

her, having an inscrutable liking for strangers, 
— above all, needy strangers. She was a woman 
to turn her back inevitably upon a friend in pros- 
perity, and court him in poverty. There was 
nothing of the snob in my mother, I must admit. 

Another vivid picture I have of this young girl 
is a gloomier and more impressive one. I can- 
not tell why I was chosen for that drive. I sup- 
pose it was because I looked so delicate and un- 
happy that my stepfather insisted on having me. 
He drove a pair of spirited horses, and I sat op- 
posite my mother and the dark young girl. She 
did not smile once that day, and the extreme 
sadness of her face riveted my attention. I 
thought I had never seen any one so beautiful 
and interesting, and I wondered why her eyes 
kept continually filling with tears. 

She and my mother whispered mysteriously 
from time to time, and the disconnected words 
that reached my ears were no enlightenment for 
my puzzled brain. Ordinarily I was too dreamy 
or too excited to have much curiosity for my 
fellows. I preferred my own thoughts to specu- 
lations upon creatures so dull and undiverting 
as big people. But this day it was different. A 
brilliant young lady in long dresses, with a glit- 
tering ring upon her finger, whom my parents 


n 


Autobiography of a Child 

treated with every kindness and consideration, 
could be just as miserable apparently as a small 
neglected girl. It was truly a wonderful dis- 
covery. 

We drove along the Kilmainham road, I now 
know, and as we went farther north, the pretty 
girl's tears flowed more freely, only she did not 
cry as we children cry. She bit her lips, and 
every moment thrust her handkerchief angrily 
into her eyes. My mother seemed to scold her 
for having wished to come that way, and I 
thought wanted to divert her attention from 
something the girl was evidently anxious to see. 

We stopped near a large building, and there 
was my stepfather turned towards us and talking 
a strange jargon. From dint of puzzling over 
each word, I arrived at the extraordinary con- 
clusion that somebody this young girl loved was 
in prison, that it was not wicked apparently to 
be locked up in prison, and that the woodwork 
they were gazing at, my stepfather with his hat 
in his hand, was something bad men were get- 
ting ready for her friend’s destruction. The 
young girl stared up at the woodwork with 
streaming passionate eyes, and then buried her 
face in her handkerchief, and rocked from side 
to side in a dreadful way. We were driving on, 


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Autobiography of a Child 

and I gazed up to see what my stepfather was 
doing. He, too, was wiping away tears, and his 
hat was right down upon his eyes. 

The mystery was solved years afterward. This 
girl was engaged to a political prisoner recently 
condemned to death. My mother used to take 
her to see him at Kilmainham Jail, and she had 
insisted on being driven round by the prison the 
day before the execution. 

My grandmother lies farther back, a fainter 
picture in that world of unsatisfactory grown-up 
people. While she lived, her favourite present 
to each of her granddaughters was either a grey 
or green silk dress, with a poky bonnet and rib- 
bons to match. In the grey we must have looked 
like little Quakeresses, and in the green like a 
gathering of the “gentle people” out of the 
moonlit woods, our proper dominion. 

Her I remember indistinctly as a thin-lipped, 
unpleasant-looking woman, who had a fixed 
opinion that children must either be “saucy” or 
“bold.” I was bold, because I was always too 
frightened of her to say anything, saucy or 
meek. 

She used to lie in bed or on the parlour sofa, 
sipping egg-flip and reading religious books. 
She was very devout ; but her religion, I suspect. 


73 


Autobiography of a Child 

served neither to brighten her own nor any one 
else’s life. It had a sombre, vinegary aspect, 
more concerned with punishment due than 
pleasure merited, more attuned to severity than 
Christian mildness. 

By some unaccountable process she melted out 
of my existence, having darkened it for some 
months, from which I infer that her death passed 
unnoted by me or was not explained to me. I 
did not see her dead, and can record no gentle 
deed of hers living. She never kissed me, but 
sometimes shook my hand in a loose gentle- 
manly fashion, and exhorted me not to be so 
“bold.” 

Once she nearly broke my heart. The cook 
had made some damson jam, and while I was 
alone in the parlour turning over the leaves of 
one of grandpapa’s music-books, which looked 
so mysteriously wonderful to me, she carried in 
a specimen bowl, and left it on the table with 
some loose coppers. I still see that bowl. It 
was white, and had a wreath of pink roses. 

When I tired of my music-book, I wandered 
by a natural impulse into temptation. The bowl 
was out of my reach, but I soon remedied that 
by drawing over a chair and climbing upon it. 
I dipped my finger into the bowl, and then put 


74 


Autobiography of a Child 

it into my mouth. It tasted, as indeed I fully 
anticipated, good. You may imagine the alacrity 
with which I continued the operation, without 
any heed of the blotches of jam that dropped 
upon the table. 

Both the hall-door and parlour-door were 
open, and I heard loud sobbing. I was ac- 
quainted with sorrow myself, which was a rea- 
son I never heard a child’s cry unmoved. I 
slipped off my chair, and ran out into the hall. 

A ragged little follow sat on the doorstep, cry- 
ing as if his heart would burst. I raced down 
the steps, and sat by his side to comfort him. 
He had cut his foot, and I asked him if it would 
not hurt less if he had some apples to eat. Crab- 
apples always soothed my own immeasurable 
woes and lightened the pangs of solitude for me. 
The weeping boy looked at me sullenly, and 
nodded. 

In I flew again and came out with the cop- 
pers grasped in my jammy palm, and holding 
the bowl of damson jam tightly wedged between 
my pinafore and both hands. 

"‘There’s splendid jam here,” I said, and in- 
vited the sufferer to dip his finger into the bowl. 

He did so, and stopped crying. He was quite 
consoled, and nearly emptied the bowl in the 


75 


Autobiography of a Child 

avidity of his appreciation. Then I gave him 
the coppers, and told him the name of the shop 
where he could get lots of the nicest crab-apples. 
The hall-door was still open, and the parlour was 
empty when I carried back the bowl. I left it on 
the table, and went out into the garden to talk 
to Dennis. 

I had no idea of having done wrong. At 
nurse’s I was free to take what I liked, and I was 
not at all familiar with the sin of stealing. Judge, 
then, my surprise when cook came out for me 
with a flaming face, and assured me I ^Vould 
catch it.” I stopped playing, and felt chill with 
apprehension. What was going to happen to me 
now? Grandpapa was not there to protect me, 
and I had not much faith in Dennis’s power to 
save me. 

Cook dragged me up-stairs, scolding me all 
the way. She called me a thief, a robber, and 
said I was worse than the dreadful highwaymen 
they wrote of in books. I whimperingly pro- 
tested. I was not a thief, I cried indignantly ; I 
was not a robber. I did not know what a high- 
wayman was, but I was sure I was not that 
either. 

“Ah ! you’ll catch it,” was all cook deigned to 
reply. 


76 


Autobiography of a Child 

How grossly and wickedly mismanaged chil- 
dren are by people who do not think or stop to 
study them! So many tears and tremors and 
moments of black despair, because angry and 
impatient persons will not take the trouble to 
use the right words and correct with justice and 
sense. To abuse an ignorant little child in dis- 
proportionate language, at an age when imagi- 
nation exaggerates and magnifies everything, 
for an impulsive action and an inconsequent er- 
ror, and tell her “she would catch it,” is surely 
a hideous perversion of strength and power. 

Relatively speaking, that moment was not less 
vivid and awful for me than the worst hour of 
a heretic in the days of the Inquisition. And I 
had as little faith in the justice or kindness of 
my judges as any wretch of those times. 

My grandmother sat in bed with her glass of 
egg-flip in her hand, presiding relentlessly over 
my castigation. Again I was informed that my 
crime was an appalling one. I had robbed 
money and robbed jam. There was no soften- 
ing of my grandmother’s face when I said, 
through my sobs of terror, that I only took the 
money to give it to a little boy that had hurt his 
foot and was crying. Cook administered an un- 
merciful whipping, as if there were not beatings 


77 


Autobiography of a Child 

enough for me without cause down in the big 
town house I hated. 

No, verily; there are times, when I look at 
happier children to-day and remember that poor 
unhappy little child of years ago, I feel there are 
wrongs we cannot be expected to forgive, scars 
no time can efface, blunders no after good will 
ever rectify. I could weep to-day as bitterly for 
that little child, so alone, so throbbing with un- 
tamed fears, as ever she wept for herself then. 


78 


Chapter VIII. 


REVOLT. 

I DO not know how long my martyrdom in the 
town house had endured before I resolved to 
make an end of it myself. Nor do I yet quite 
understand how the scene that led to an excess 
of misery so terminated began. 

I had been more contented that day than 
usual. The nurse had let me sit by the nursery 
fire while she bathed and dressed the latest addi- 
tion to our family circle, a baby boy with a pink 
wrinkled face. Compared with that gurgling 
morsel of humanity, I felt very wise and old in- 
deed. After that the nursemaid came and took 
me on her knee, and while perched there she 
sang me a song. I slept in the next room, and 
was not often allowed into the nursery, or I am 
sure the nurse and nursemaid would have made 
life easier for me. 

Then I wandered into the play-room, and here 
great doings were afoot. They were getting up 
a transformation scene. On the top of each 


79 


Autobiography of a Child 

ladder a little girl sat, representing a fairy, and 
in the middle of the room a small child lay with 
a white cloth about her. When somebody 
clapped hands she sprang up, caught her skirts 
in either hand, and began to dance as she had 
seen the fairies in the pantomime. 

They were all in high spirits that day, and let 
me look on without snubbing or laughing at me. 
Like all creatures unaccustomed to much mercy, 
this small favour filled me with joy, and I ex- 
panded upon a whiff of social equality. 

Children resemble dogs in their dislike of in- 
truders, and to these young people I daresay I, 
with my sulky miserable face, pale and woe-be- 
gone from association with sorrow and from un- 
assuaged longing for other days, was an unat- 
tractive enough intruder. One there was who 
always resented my appearance in their midst 
more than the rest, my mother’s favourite, the 
five-year-old queen of the establishment. My 
mother used to call her queen, and tell her that 
she was at liberty to do what she liked to me, as 
I was only a slave. 

What a surprising amount of good must lie 
at the bottom of a nature so trained, that it ever 
developed into good-natured and generous 
womanhood! But to expect that the child in 


8o 


Autobiography of a Child 

those days should have been other than a 
little vixen to me, would be to expect the im- 
possible. 

The play was interrupted for dinner, and after 
dinner the troop marched up again to the play- 
room to resume their game. I stayed down- 
stairs, and stole into the storeroom to talk fo 
Mrs. Clement. Near tea-hour she sent me on 
some message, and that, of course, was a proud 
moment for me. Children love to be sent on 
messages between their elders. They instantly 
become as inflated as a general’s aide-de-camp, 
and hardly need a horse in imagination to place 
them in their own esteem above the level of other 
children. 

How it all came about I know not. The queen 
and the slave encountered somewhere on the 
way. We met like two young puppies and 
snarled. The queen had a despotic notion of her 
own rights. She might snarl at me, but I had 
not the right to reply. If she struck me it was 
part of my punishment for being in her way, and 
my duty was to bear it. 

I don’t suppose she reasoned this way any 
more than the young puppy does when it flies 
at the throat of a mongrel it dislikes. Any- 
how, she struck me. I was a proud, fierce lit- 


8i 


Autobiography of a Child 

tie devil, and being two years her senior, I laid 
her low, with an ugly red stain on her white 
cheek. 

As I do not remember how it began, so I 
do not recall how it ended. There is a dark 
blank of several hours — centuries it seemed to 
me — and I was in my cot sobbing myself to 
sleep, and telling myself that I could not bear it, 
and to-morrow would run away to my dear 
everyday parents. 

Next morning I sullenly submitted to be 
dressed and taken down to breakfast. But the 
red-and-white bowl I ate my bread and milk out 
of no longer delighted my eye, and no amount of 
sugar could take the taste of bitterness out of 
that bread-and-milk. My stepfather came into 
the room, and looked at me in reproachful 
silence. Usually he kissed me and flung me up 
to the ceiling. But now that the poor miserable 
little worm had turned and struck the idol of the 
house, his own child, he had no kind word for 
me. He only knew of the affair what he had 
been told, and how many thoughtless big peo- 
ple can understand what goes on in the hearts 
of sore and lonely babies ? 

He may have noted the sadness of my face, 
but what did he know of the inward bruise, the 
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Autobiography of a Child 

hunger for love and sympathy, the malady of 
life that had begun to gnaw at my soul at an 
age when other little girls are out racing 
among the flowers in a universe bounded 
and heated and beautified by the love of mother 
and father? 

Mrs. Clement must have been very busy, for 
she did not come to comfort me. Perhaps she, 
too, thought I was a fiend. But I was too proud 
to seek to explain matters to any one. If they 
wanted to believe I was bad, they might think 
I was as bad as ever they liked. 

In my open-worked pinafore and little house 
slippers, bare-headed and bare-armed, I stole 
anxiously down-stairs. The baker was carrying 
in the bread, and the hall-door was open. This 
was my chance, and I seized it. Ah, there were 
the wide long streets, and however cruel the big 
people might be who went up and down them, at 
least they could not hurt me, for I did not belong 
to any of them. 

Like a frightened hare I scurried along the 
pavement until I came to a big crossing. I 
paused here in new peril. To go over alone 
meant to risk contact with the wheels and 
horses continually rolling and stamping by. I 
had not the courage to do this, and I stood 


83 


Autobiography of a Child 

gazing disconsolately across at the happy people 
walking so unconcernedly on the other side. 
While I stood there a policeman marched up 
in a leisurely fashion. He looked as if he might 
help a little girl, and I knew when robbers at- 
tacked you the proper person to assist you was 
a policeman. 

“Please, Mr. Policeman, will you take me 
across the street?’' I asked, going boldly up 
to him. 

The amiable giant put out his hand, grasped 
my eager fingers, and I pattered along at his 
side as he gravely led me over the crossing. 
Without a word, I raced ahead ; the quicker I 
ran, the quicker I believed I would reach 
Mamma Cochrane’s house, and my dear friends, 
nurse, and Louie, and Mary Jane. 

In what direction I ran I know not to-day; 
I seemed to have been running down intermin- 
able streets for hours and hours, till at last my 
feet in their thin slippers began to ache. Grad- 
ually my legs stiffened, and it was less and less 
easy to continue running. Nobody stopped me, 
but I have an idea many stared at me. I hardly 
knew which I most feared, to be overtaken and 
carried back to my mother, or to be let die of 
hunger in those big unfriendly streets. Either 
84 


Autobiography of a Child 

prospect seemed so terrible to me in a moment of 
lucid vision, that I at once dropped upon a 
doorstep and began to cry. 

“What’s the matter, little lady?” a tall police- 
man asked, with a smile of insidious kindliness. 

“I want to find my everyday mamma so 
badly,” I sobbed. “But it’s so far away, — I’m 
very tired, and nobody is sorry for me, though 
I’m so unhappy.” 

I gazed anxiously up into the face of the big 
policeman, and wondered if such a very big per- 
son could possibly understand and pity the sor- 
rows of such a very small person as myself. 

“What’s your name?” asked the big police- 
man. 

“Angela.” 

“And where do you live, missy?” 

“Oh, a drefful long way off — in a big house 
down there,” pointing vaguely in front of me, 
“in a horrid big house, without any fields or 
flowers at all.” 

“Won’t you come along with me, missy?” 
coaxed the policeman, and if he had asked me 
to go to prison with that look and smile, I would 
cheerfully have gone, I think. 

He lifted me into his arms and carried me, I 
know now, to the nearest police-station. Here 

8s 


Autobiography of a Child 

I was installed upon an inspector’s knee, and 
an army of giants stood round me and made 
much of me. How the gentlemen of the force 
may appeal to others, I know not, but I must 
ever regard them as my kindest friends. They 
petted me prodigiously, and vied with each other 
in providing me with luxuries. One held a piece 
of bread-and-jam for me, another a slice of 
bread-and-honey, and various hands held out 
sweetmeats and cakes and apples. The thing 
was to satisfy everybody and devour each deli- 
cacy successively. 

The amiable giants smiled upon me, and ap- 
peared to listen to my confidential chatter with 
admiration and delight. Out of the gloom of 
the domestic circle I could be expansive to 
rashness. Between bites, I told them the tale of 
my private grievances, and they shook sym- 
pathetic heads over my account of Stevie’s dis- 
appearance in a queer box, and dropped their 
jaws when I, charmed with the sensation I had 
made, assured them that I too was so miserable 
and lonely that I would like to be put in a 
box and sent to heaven. I would much rather 
go back to Mamma Cochrane’s than any- 
thing; but if I could not find her I would like 
to die like Stevie, unless the policemen would 


86 


Autobiography of a Child 

take care of me and let me stay with them 
always. 

The inspector was ready to adopt me on the 
spot; meanwhile, as I was tired and the excite- 
ment had worn off, he encouraged me to fall 
asleep on his knee, which I was nothing loath 
to do. 

The rest is a vague memory. Somebody 
shook me, and I opened my eyes and saw my 
stepfather smiling at me. I thought I was at 
home, and rubbed my eyes, and then sat up. 
But I was still in the inspector’s arms — I recog- 
nised his black cap and grey beard. My circle 
of friendly giants had vanished; but on a table 
beside me were heaped unfinished slices of bread 
and jam and honey, gingerbread nuts, Shrews- 
bury biscuits, bulls’ eyes, brandy balls, sugar- 
stick, and apples. A couple of policemen stood 
at the door and grinned in eloquent assurance 
of continued friendship, and the inspector had 
not released his comforting clasp of my wearied 
body. 

“Papa, I’m so happy here. Don’t let us go 
back any more to Sunday mamma. Let us 
stay here always with the nice policemen.” 

My stepfather laughed his joyous cordial 
laugh, and caught me in his arms. He shook 
87 


Autobiography of a Child 

hands with the inspector and the policemen, and 
carried me into a cab. I was still too sleepy 
and tired to whimper, and we had hardly set 
off before I was fast asleep on my stepfather^s 
knee. 


88 


Chapter IX. 


MY FRIEND MARY ANN. 

Seven has been described as the age of reason. 
I am curious to know why, since many of us at 
fifty can hardly be said to have attained that 
rare and sublime period. John Stuart Mill, for 
his misfortune, at seven may have discovered 
some rudimentary development of sense, but no 
other child of my acquaintance past or present. 
But if seven is not marked for me by the dawn 
of reason, it is important as the start of contin- 
uous reminiscence. 

Memory is no longer fragmentary and epi- 
sodic. Life here begins to be a story, ever 
broken, ever clouded, with radiant hours amid 
its many sadnesses, quaint and adorable surprises 
ever coming to dry the tears of blank despair 
and solitude ; an Irish melody of mirth and mel- 
ancholy, all sorts of unimaginable tempests of 
passion and tears, soothed as instantaneously as 
evoked, by the quickening touch of rapture and 
racial buoyancy. Mine was the loneliest, the 
89 


Autobiography of a Child 

most tragic of childhoods, yet I doubt if any 
little creature has ever been more susceptible to 
the intoxication of laughter, more vividly re- 
sponsive to every mirthful and emotional claim 
of life. 

After my singular and enchanting experience 
of the police-station, where, as a rule, the hard- 
ened instruments of justice are not permitted 
to show themselves in so gracious and hospit- 
able a light, it was decided to expatriate the 
poor little rebel beyond the strip of sullen sea 
that divides the shamrock shores from the home 
of the rose. There, at least, vagrant fancies 
would be safely sheltered behind high conventual 
walls, and the most unmerciful ladies of Mercy, 
in a picturesque midland town of England, were 
requested to train and guide me in the path I 
was not destined to adorn, or indeed to perse- 
vere in. 

Pending the accomplishment of my doom, I 
was removed from the centre of domestic dis- 
cord and martyrdom to the suburban quiet of 
my grandfather’s house. 

This decision had its unexpected compensa- 
tion. The cross old cook, whom I had not seen 
since the day I stole her bowl of damson-jam, 
had disappeared to make way for Mary Ann, the 


90 


Autobiography of a Child 

divine, the mysterious, the sublime, the ever- 
delicious Mary Ann. Where did she come from, 
whither has she vanished, the soother of the 
sorrows of those most lamentable days? 

Alas ! now I know the secret of her enchant- 
ment, of those perishable surprises of mood and 
imagination that so perpetually lifted me out of 
my miserable self, diverted me in my tragic 
gloom, and sent me to bed each night in a 
state of delightful excitement. Mary Ann drank 
punch, and on the fiery wings of alcoholism 
wafted herself and me, her astonished satellite, 
into the land of revelry and mad movement. 
How ardently, then, I yearned for the reform of 
poor humanity through the joyous amenities of 
punch. Had my grandmother up-stairs con- 
sumed punch instead of her embittering egg- 
flip! Had the ladies of Mercy, my future per- 
secutors, drunk punch, the world might have 
proved a hilarious playground for me instead of 
a desperate school of adversity. 

Mary Ann possessed a single blemish in a 
nature fashioned to captivate a lonely and ex- 
citable child. She worshipped my uncle Lionel. 
My uncle Lionel was his mother’s favourite — 
a Glasgow lad, my grandfather contemptuously 
defined him, without the Cameron nose; a fine. 


91 


Autobiography of a Child 

handsome, fair young fellow, the picture of my 
mother, extremely distinguished in manner and 
appearance, and reputed to be a genius. He is 
said to have written quantities of superlative 
verse which he disdained to publish ; but as no- 
body ever saw even the manuscript, we may re- 
gard the achievement as apocryphal. He had 
finished his studies in Paris, which explained a 
terrifying habit, whenever he met me — frighten- 
ing the wits out of me the while by his furious 
look — of bursting out into what I afterwards 
learnt to be an old French song: “Corbleu, 
madame, que faites vous ici?’’ 

I wish grown-up persons could realise the 
shudder of terror that ran through me and 
momentarily dimmed for me the light of day, 
when I heard that loud voice, encountered the 
mock ferocity of that blue glance, and then felt 
myself roughly captured by strong arms, lifted 
up, and a shaven chin drawn excruciatingly 
across my tender small visage. These are trifles 
to read of, but what is a trifle in childhood? A 
child feeds greedily upon its own excesses of 
sensation, thrives upon them, or is consumed 
by them. To these early terrors, these accum- 
ulated emotions, these swift alternations of 
anguish and rapture, which made opening exist- 


92 


Autobiography of a Child 

ence for me a sort of swing, perpetually flying 
and dropping between tears and laughter, from 
radiant heights, without transition, to pitch dark- 
ness, do I attribute the nervous illnesses that 
have so remorselessly pursued me in after- 
years. The wonder is the mind itself did not 
give way. 

Big language for a handsome young man with 
a blonde moustache and an elegant figure to 
have provoked, with his Corbleu, madame! his 
theatrical fury, and his shaven chin. He now 
and then gave me a shilling to console me, which 
shilling I spontaneously offered to Mary Ann, 
whose real consolation it was, since it filled the 
steaming glass for her and my friend Dennis, the 
red-nosed coachman, and permitted me to sit in 
front of them, a grave and awed spectator of 
their aged frolics. 

Immoral undoubtedly, yet that evening 
bumper of punch converted Mary Ann into a 
charming companion. She and the fire in front 
of us — for it was on the verge of winter — 
cheered me as I had not yet been cheered since 
I had left my kind Kildare folk. The tyrants 
sat above in state, while I, enthralled below, 
listened to Mary Ann, as she wandered im- 
partially from legend to reminiscence and anec- 


93 


Autobiography of a Child 

dote, and not infrequently burst into song and 
dance. 

Her sense of hospitality was warm and un- 
limited. Dennis she welcomed with a ^‘Troth 
an’ ’tis yourself, Dennis, me boy.” For me she 
placed a chair opposite her own, and sometimes, 
in the midst of her enjoyment, stopped to help 
me to a spoonful of the stimulating liquid from 
her tumbler, remarking with a wink that it 
brightened my eyes and considerably heightened 
my beauty. It certainly made me cough, sput- 
ter, and smartened my eyelids with the quick 
sensation of tears, and then she would medita- 
tively refer to the days when she too was young, 
and had pink cheeks and eyes the boys thought 
were never intended for the salvation of her 
soul. I was a curious child, and was eager for 
an explanation of the dark saying, on which 
Dennis would chuck my chin, with the liveliest 
of sympathetic grimaces across at the irresistible 
Mary Ann, which made the saying darker still, 
and Mary Ann would fling herself back in her 
chair convulsed with laughter. 

^'Ah, Miss Angela, ’twas the devil of a colleen 
I' was in thim days, most outrageous, with a foot, 
I tell ye, as light as thim cratures as dances be 
moonlight. Sure didn’t I once dance down Rory 


94 


Autobiography of a Child 

Evans in the big barn of Farmer Donoghue’s at 
Clonakil'ty, when there was that cheering, I tell 
ye, fit to lift the roof off the house.” 

At this point she invariably illustrated the tale 
of her terpsichorean prowess in a legendary past 
by what she called “illigant step dancing,” and 
endeavoured to teach me the Irish jig. She ob- 
served with indulgent contempt that I showed a 
fine capacity for the stamping and whirling and 
the triumphant shout, but I failed altogether in 
the noble science of ''step dancing.” 

But what I preferred to the dancing, exciting 
as it was, were the ghost-stories, the legends of 
banshees, the thrilling and beautiful tales of the 
Colleen Bawn and Feeney the Robber. Those 
two were for long the hero and heroine of my 
infancy. Gerald Griffin’s romance she, oddly 
enough, knew by heart. I forget now most of 
the names of the persons of the drama, but at 
seven I knew them all as dear and intimate 
friends : the forlorn young man who wrote those 
magic lines, "A place in thy memory, dearest” — 
did even Shelley later ever stir my bosom with 
fonder and deeper and less lucid emotions than 
those provoked by those tinkling lines, breathed 
from the soul of Mary Ann upon the fumes of 
punch? — the perfidious hero who once, like 


95 


Autobiography of a Child 

Mary Ann, drank too much and danced a jig 
when he ought to have been otherwise engaged, 
Miles, Anne Chute, and the lovely betrayed Eily. 

I knew them all, wept for them as I had never 
wept for myself, and was only lifted out of a 
crushing sense of universal woe when Dennis 
produced an orange, which was his habit when- 
ever he saw me on the point of succumbing 
under alien disaster. 

Sometimes, to entertain my hosts, I would 
volunteer to warble my strange symphonies, and 
was never so ecstatically happy as when I felt 
the tears of musical rapture roll down my cheeks, 
when Dennis, by way of applause, always ob- 
served lugubriously — 

"‘Ah, ’twas the poor master was proud indeed 
of her voice. ‘She^ll be a Catherine Hayes yet, 
you’ll see, Dennis,’ he used to say, ‘or maybe 
she’ll compose illigant operas.’ ” 

Alas ! I neither sing nor compose, and listen 
to the singing and the music of others with un- 
emotional quietude. So many different achieve- 
ments have been fondly expected of me, that I 
have preferred the alternative of achieving noth- 
ing. Better demolish a multitude of expecta- 
tions than build one’s house of the perishable 
bricks of a single one ! 


96 


Autobiography of a Child 

Preparations for my departure around me 
must have been going on, but I perceived noth- 
ing of them. I vaguely remember daily ac- 
quaintance with a dame’s school in the neigh- 
bourhood, whither Mary Ann conducted me 
every morning. But remembrance confines it- 
self to the first positive delights of a slate and 
pencil. Next to my own operas and Mary Ann’s 
stories, I could conceive nothing on earth more 
fascinating than a certain slate, after I had 
arduously polished it, a slate-pencil, and leisure 
to draw what I liked on the blue-grey square. 
There were little boys and girls on the benches 
before and behind me, but I only see myself 
absorbed with my new pleasure, making strokes 
and curves and letters, and effacing them with 
impassioned gravity. 


97 


Chapter X. 


THE GREAT NEWS. 

A GROWN-UP young lady, with yellow ringlets, 
in a black-and-white silk dress, paid a visit to 
my grandmother one day, when I heard myself 
described as “bold and saucy,” — heaven knows 
why, since I never uttered a word in that formid- 
able presence, and felt less than a mouse’s cour- 
age if I but accidentally encountered those 
severe black eyes. The young lady offered to 
show me her dolls. I never cared for dolls, and 
I went without enthusiasm. It was my first 
glimpse of girlish luxury. The room in which 
her treasures were kept seemed to me as large as 
a chamber of the palaces of story. There were 
trains, carriages, perambulators, about two dozen 
dolls of all sizes, with gorgeous wardrobes ; there 
were beds, bonnets, parasols, kitchen utensils, 
dear little cups ; babies in long clothes, peasants, 
dancing-girls, and queens with crowns on their 
heads and long cloaks. The young girl was 
one of the many extinguishable flames of my 
98 


Autobiography of a Child 

uncle Lionel, destined, like Goethe, to sigh for 
one, and then another in sentimental freedom, 
and end in bondage of an execrable kind. She 
is blurred for me, but that palatial doll’s cham- 
ber and all those undreamed-of splendours re- 
main still a vivid vision, like the lovely panto- 
mime, whither Dennis took me with his pockets 
full of oranges to suck between the acts. Oh, 
that bewildering paradisiacal sight of the fairies ! 
the speechless emotions of the transformation 
scene! the thirst, the yearning, for short muslin 
skirts, and limelight, and feet twinkling raptur- 
ously in fairyland ! The humours of the clown 
and the harlequin left me cold; for, being ac- 
quainted with the extreme tenderness of the hu- 
man body through harsh experience, I could not 
understand the pleasure the clown found in con- 
tinually banging and knocking down the harm- 
less harlequin. Each unprovoked blow left me 
sadder and more harassed. I felt the old man 
must be very much hurt, and wondered why 
the audience seemed to enjoy his repeated dis- 
comfiture so hugely. But the fairy dancing was 
quite different. Here was an untempered joy 
that did not pass my comprehension. To be a 
fairy by night, and possess all the young girl’s 
toys by day ! This was the dream harshly broken 


09 


Autobiography of a Child. 

by the appearance of my sisters, themselves de- 
mure little fairies in green silk dresses and poky 
green silk bonnets. 

They lured me out among the dead branches, 
where the robins were dolefully hopping in 
search of crumbs, and exclaimed together : “Oh, 
Angela, wait till you hear the news 

What news? Why, I was to go away, across 
the sea, which was always awfully wet, like the 
pond, only bigger and deeper. A ship, they 
said, was like those little paper-boats the boys 
used to make at Kildare, and you sat in it and 
rocked up and down, unless a shark came and 
ate you up. Somebody told them that the Eng- 
lish were dreadfully proud, and thought no end 
of themselves, and looked down on the Irish. 

“But you must stand up for yourself, Angela. 
Tell them your father was king of Ireland lots 
of hundreds of years ago, and that long ago, 
when the kings lived, all your cousins and 
brothers were red-cross knights.” 

“What were red-cross knights ?” I asked, 
deeply impressed. 

“Oh, they were men who wore long cloaks 
with red crosses on them, and rode about on 
steeds.” 

“What’s steeds?” I breathlessly inquired. 


100 


Autobiography of a Child 

“Horses,” was the pettish answer; “only you 
know they go quicker than horses, and knights 
always preferred steeds. And they took things 
from the rich and gave them to the poor.” 

“What things?” I again asked. 

“Isn’t she stupid? I declare she knows noth- 
ing. Why, food and money and clothes, to be 
sure. They’ll say the Irish are dreadful ignorant 
and stupid when they see Angela, won’t they?” 

A great deal more was of course said between 
four passionate and voluble children; but all I 
remember .of that winter afternoon was the stu- 
pendous news that I was going away in a ship 
soon across the sea to a foreign land, where I 
should be submitted to insult, perhaps torture, 
because I was Irish, if I were not previously de- 
voured by a shark — a creature the more terrible 
because of my complete ignorance not only of 
its existence, but of its general features ; and the 
mention of a new animal was something like the 
menace of the devil : large, luminous, potent, and 
indistinct. I already knew through Mary Jane 
that there was a Queen who put Irish people 
into prison, and entertained herself by hanging 
them at her leisure, and that evening I startled 
Mary Ann out of her senses by asking her if it 
was likely I should be hanged in England like 


lOI 


Autobiography of a Child 

Robert Emmet. And then, in order that she 
should have a proper notion of the extent of my 
acquantance with Robert Emmet, I stood in the 
middle of the kitchen, with my arms strenuously 
folded, my brows gathered in a fearful frown to 
reproduce the attitude of Robert Emmet in the 
dock, as depicted in the parlour of Mary Jane’s 
mamma. 

^‘You know the English hanged him ’cause 
he was Irish,” I explained, extremely proud to 
impart my information. “Mary Jane told me so. 
When I fell into the pond she cried, ’cause she 
was afraid the Queen would hang her too.” 

Mary Ann laughed till she wept, and then 
drying her eyes, vowed she would like to see 
“thim English” touch a gould hair of my head. 
“If thim monsthers as much as lay a hand on 
ye, darlint, you just send me word, and me and 
Dennis ’ll soon come over and whack them all 
round.” 

Perfidious Mary Ann ! She failed to keep this 
large and liberal promise when, in my sore hour 
of need, I indited an ill-spelt epistle to her from 
Saxon shores, and urged her to come and save 
me. I did not insist upon the whacking, I only 
entreated to be taken back to Erin. Probably 
the letter never reached her. 


102 


Autobiography of a Child 

I think that it was immediately after this en- 
grossing hour that I found Mary Ann sobbing 
over an open trunk in the lumber-room. “Your 
very own, alannah; look at the big white let- 
ters,” she cried, and wiped her eyes in a new 
linen garment before pressing it into the box. 
“Thim monsthers can’t say as you haven’t chim- 
mies fit for any lady of the land. Ye’re to wear 
a black cashmere o’ a Sunday, just as if all your 
relatives was dead. Did ye ever hear the likes?” 

I certainly never did, for strange to say I had 
not worn a black dress after Stevie’s death. I 
did not, however, dislike the notion. Black was 
not a hue with which I was familiar. Still mus- 
ing on all the extraordinary things that were 
continually happening, and wondering whether 
the eventual climax of an uncertain career would 
prove the shark or the gallows, not, however, 
using this superb word in my reflections on the 
end of a little girl precariously balanced on the 
boards of existence, I found myself confronted 
with my terrible grandmother in a farewell inter- 
view. 

She was propped up with pillows, and her eter- 
nal egg-flip was beside her on a little table, along 
with her prayer-book, her spectacles, her rosary, 
and her favourite novel, which I afterwards 


103 


Autobiography of a Child 

learned was ‘'Adam Bede.” My mind reverted 
then, and has since often reverted, to an abomin- 
able scene in that chamber I abhored. I had 
been noisy or disobedient, — raced down the pas- 
sage, or refused to go to bed when uncle Lionel 
shouted to me from above the kitchen-stairs, 
probably stamping my foot with the air of a little 
fury, which was my sad way in those untamed 
days. With a Napoleonic gesture, my uncle 
caught my ear, and dragged me into the awful 
presence. Here he was solemnly ordered to fetch 
the knife-sharpener, which he did ; heated it 
among the flames till it glowed incandescent 
scarlet; then, my grandmother looking fiend- 
ishly on, gathered me between his knees, held 
my mouth open with one hand, and approachea 
it to my lips. Of course it did not touch me, 
but memory shrinks, a blank, into the void of 
terror. 

The precise text of my grandmother’s address 
I forget, but the nature of her harangue is un- 
forgettable. She addressed me as might a mag- 
istrate a refractory subject about to be dis- 
charged from a reformatory. I was exhorted 
not to be bold, or bad, or saucy, to say my 
prayers, to tell the truth, not to thieve (oh ! that 
damson-jam and those coppers), not to get 


104 


Autobiography of a Child 

caught again by the police; I was warned that 
I might drop dead in one of my violent fits of 
rage, and then I would surely go to hell ; was ad- 
jured to learn my lessons, to respect my supe- 
riors, to break none of the Commandments, to 
avoid the seven deadly sins, learn the Catechism 
by heart, with the alternative of having my hair 
cut short and being sent to the poorhouse. She 
then held out her yellow hand, and placed a 
sparkling sovereign in my small palm. 

^‘Don’t lose it. There are twenty shillings in 
it, and in each shilling twelve pennies. Good- 
b3^e, and don’t forget all I’ve said.” 

She shook my hand in her loose gentlemanly 
fashion, as if I were a young man going to col- 
lege instead of a baby girl of seven about to be 
expatriated alone among strangers, in an alien 
land, for no conceivable reason but the singular 
caprice of her who had given me so ill a gift as 
life. It was the last time I saw my grandmother. 
I heard soon of her death with complete indif- 
ference. 

“Polly was a jolly Japanese,” sang my uncle 
cheerily, as he caught me up in his arms, and 
carried me down to the cab, on which Dennis 
had placed my trunk. Mary Ann was weeping 
on the steps. She handed me a bag of ginger- 


105 


Autobiography of a Child 

bread and two apples, and told me I was not to 
be “down.” 

“ Tis yourself that’s worth all the English that 
ever was born,” she asserted, and I dolorously 
assured her that whatever happened, even if the 
Queen came in person to hang me, I would keep 
“up.” 

“That’s me hearty,” roared Dennis, holding 
the cab-door. “In with you, and do something 
for your living.” 

Uncle Lionel lifted me in, gave me a crown- 
piece, and to my astonishment kissed both my 
cheeks without hurting me. He stood on the 
pavement, handsome, smiling, and elegant, as 
the cab drove off with solitary, bewildered little 
me as surely a waif as any orphan. And waving 
his hand, he turned unconcerned on his heel. 


Chapter XI. 


PREPARING TO FACE THE WORLD. 

Was it six weeks or six months since I left 
that big town house, a disgraced and blighted 
little being? Time to a child is so unequal a 
matter. A month may seem a century, a year 
appear vaguer than a dream. Indeed, I have 
never yet been able to tell myself how long a 
space of time actually separated my good-bye 
to Kildare and my departure for England. Mul- 
tiplied experiences combined to mislead me. 

Simultaneously with the opening of the cab- 
door opened the big door of my stepfather’s 
house, and a group of little golden heads showed 
in the dark frame. Feet and hands and voluble 
lips and eyes played together, and for a very 
brief while I enjoyed the sensations of a heroine. 

This small world was excited prospectively at 
the thought of my coming adventures. I was 
soon to represent to them the unknown, the else- 
where, the eternal dream of “far fair foreign 
lands.” Things were to happen to me that never 


107 


Autobiography of a Child 

yet happened to mortal. I was to be snubbed 
by and to subdue a haughty people. Perhaps 
if I did something extremely outrageous I should 
be put into prison, with chains round my feet 
and wrists. Pending which, I was to travel for 
several hours by land and several hours by water. 

“She has come already,” they shouted glee- 
fully. “Oh, such a dreadful person, Angela! 
taller than papa, and the skin is quite tight round 
her eyes and mouth as if she couldn’t laugh.” 

She was, indeed, an odd-looking woman, the 
jailer to whom my parents so unconcernedly 
confided me. Not unkind, but austere and 
grotesque in her black cap and long black veil. 
She had left a Tipperary village to become a 
lady of Mercy in the English convent, and to 
her was intrusted the care of my deported self. 
In religion her name was Sister Clare, and the 
impression she has left on me is that of an in- 
offensive policeman masquerading in woman’s 
attire, with limbs too long for a decorous man- 
agement of them, honest, cold blue eyes, and, 
instead of the vivid hues of life upon the lean 
cheek, discoloured parchment drawn without a 
wrinkle tightly over the high-boned impassible 
visage. 

I had the bad taste to show fright upon sight 

io8 


Autobiography of a Child 

of her lugubrious garb of postulant, and like the 
little savage I was, passionately declined her 
proffered kiss; but when my stepfather held me 
on his knees beside her, and spoke to her with 
his charming affability, I let myself be coaxed 
into equable endurance of the queer picture. I 
saw then that she was not dangerous. In- 
dulgence lurked beneath the austere expression, 
and if the glance was cold, it was neither hard 
nor cruel. 

Up-stairs in the nursery the hours passed 
tumultuously in a frenzy of discussion. Each 
little head was busy forging its theory of de- 
portment and action in circumstances so strange 
and adventurous as those of a baby girl going 
out alone among the sharks and foreigners of 
a cold undreamed-of world. The immediate fear 
was that I should disgrace my land by my Kil- 
dare accent. My eldest sister contemptuously 
declared that I talked “just like that disgusting 
little girl with the oily black ringlets” ; and the 
imminence of a shower at the abrupt reference to 
the dear and absent Mary Jane, so far away, so 
unconscious of my perils and terrors and im- 
portance, averted an outburst of indignation at 
the wanton insult cast upon her picturesque 
head. 


109 


Autobiography of a Child 

It was regarded as an aggravation of my im- 
perfections that I could not write, else I might 
have kept up the lively excitement of my depart- 
ure by a raw account of my adventures. But 
by the time I should have mastered the difficult 
art of writing and spelling, I should probably 
have forgotten all my wonderful experiences, 
and they would have lost all interest in the story 
of my early travels. 

If my mother had been an early Christian or 
a socialist, she could not have shown herself a 
more inveterate enemy of personal property. 
Never through infancy, youth, or middle age has 
she permitted any of her offspring to preserve 
relics, gifts, or souvenirs. Treasures of every 
kind she pounced upon, and either destroyed or 
gave away, — partly from a love of inflicting pain, 
partly from an iconoclastic temper, but more 
than anything from a despotic ferocity of self- 
assertion. The preserving of relics, of the thous- 
and and one little absurdities sentiment and 
fancy ever cling to, implied something beyond 
her power, something she could not hope to 
touch or destroy, implied above all an inner life 
existing independent of her harsh authority. The 
outward signs of this mental independence she 
ever ruthlessly effaced. 


no 


Autobiography of a Child 

And my desolation was great when I found 
the old wooden box I had brought up from Kil- 
dare empty of all my beloved little relics of a 
fugitive happiness and of yearned-for friends. 
Gone the mug with somebody else^s name upon 
it, gone the plate with the little white knobs and 
the painted black dog, gone my book about 
cocks and hens, the gift of that vision of ro- 
mance, my godfather, swallowed up radiantly in 
Chinese yellow. Gone, alas ! Stevie’s “Robinson 
Crusoe” and his knife, and every tiny possession 
of a tiny sentimentalist, whose heart was so fam- 
ished for love and kind words and kisses, and 
clung the more eagerly for this to these poor 
trifles. 

I sat on the floor beside my empty box, and 
refused to be comforted. These things were to 
have softened the rigours of exile, might have 
gone with me to the scaffold as sustainment and 
benediction, if I had the misfortune to rouse the 
ire of that mysterious being, the Queen, whom 
Mary Jane depicted as sitting on a high throne, 
with a crown on her head and a knife in her hand 
for the necks of the unruly Irish. 

But I had nothing now to take to bed with 
me, nothing to hug and weep over, nothing to 
tell my sorrows to when the society and per- 


Autobiography of a Child 

secution of big people become intolerable. I 
stood, or rather sat, alone in a desolate uni- 
verse, with the violated coffin of my regrets in 
front of me. Being worn out with all I had 
gone through that day, I probably fell asleep 
sobbing against the empty box, and night robbed 
me of any further sense of misfortune. 


II2 


Chapter XII. 


AN EXILE FROM ERIN. 

The next day I was too fully conscious of being 
the heroine of a sensational drama, to shed tears 
over my lonely and miserable self. The boat left 
the North Wall early in the morning, so that 
toilet, breakfast, farewells were a hurry, a scare, 
the suspension of feeling in stunned senses. 
I scarcely tasted tea, but I looked forlornly at 
the lovely red-and-white cups as big as bowls, 
which I still remember as a comforting joy to 
the eye. 

All the children around me were stamping and 
shouting, running every minute between mouth- 
fuls to see if the cab had come, if my box were 
in the hall, and read aloud the label, “Passenger 
to Lysterby by Birmingham,’’ in awed tones. It 
seemed so wonderful to them that I should be 
described as “passenger” to anywhere. Not a 
tear was shed by anybody. Only war-whoops 
and joyous voluble chatter and thrilling orders 
that rang along the passage like the clarion notes 


Autobiography of a Child 

of destiny. Elsewhere hearts under such circum- 
stances might break. Here they only palpitated 
with delight in the unusual, and the whole party 
was filled with a like impatience to lead me in 
triumph down to the cab, not from a heartless 
desire to get rid of me, but for the grand dra- 
matic instant of farewell. They greedily yearned 
to bundle me into the fatal vehicle, for the in- 
toxicating novelty of waving their handkerchiefs 
to me from the doorstep as the cab drove off. 

What might follow for me they did not take 
into account, having neither imagination nor 
tenderness to help them to look beyond a glow- 
ing moment. What would follow for them they 
were already perfectly aware of i a wild race up- 
stairs, and a whole entrancing afternoon devoted 
to discussing my departure, voyage, and prob- 
able experiences. 

My stepfather took me up in his arms, kissed 
me on both cheeks with his cheery careless af- 
fection, and carried me down-stairs. My mother 
followed with a shawl, and a packet containing 
cold chicken, bread, cake, and milk. 

In the hall the terrible postulant stood wait- 
ing for me, and met my scared look with a quick 
nod, meant to assure me that although her aspect 
might be that of an ogre, she could be trusted 


Autobiography of a Child 

not to devour a little girl. My mother gave her 
the lunch and the shawl, and told her to keep 
me warm, as I was not yet recovered from the 
effects of whooping-cough. Through the open 
door I saw my box on the top of the cab, and it 
seemed as if hundreds of shrill young voices were 
shouting blithely to me, “Good-bye, Angela.” 
Quantities of soft young lips strove to kiss me at 
once, and dancing blue eyes sparkled around me, 
and gave me the sensation of being already cast 
out of a warm circle where my empty place 
would not be felt, where no word of regret would 
ever be uttered for the unwelcome waif that 
called them sister. 

Without a tear or a word, giving back their 
joyous “Good-bye” without sorrow or revolt, I 
carried my mumbed little heart into the cab, so 
alone that the companionship of the postulant 
offered me no promise of protection or sympathy, 
and I never once looked at my stepfather sitting 
opposite me. 

So I began my life, and so has it continued. 
Some obscure instinct of pride compelled me to 
wave my handkerchief in response to excited 
waves of white from the pavement. I looked as 
if I did not care, and this was the start of a 
subsequent deliberate development of the “don’t 


Autobiography of a Child 

care'’ philosophy, which the good ladies of Mercy 
triumphantly prophesied would eventually lead 
me to perdition. To perdition it did not lead me, 
but to many private hours of despair and suffer- 
ing, for which I could claim no alleviation in the 
support of my fellows, since I had chosen the 
attitude of defiance and ‘‘don’t care.” 

Heaven knows how much I cared! what salt 
passionate tears I wept because I always cared 
a great deal too much. But this nobody knew. 
My pride was to pass for a hardened reprobate, 
and such were my iniquities and the ferocity of 
that same untamable pride that if I achieved suc- 
cess in nothing else, here my accomplishment 
could not be disputed. 

I can hardly tell now what were my first defi- 
nite impressions of a ship and the sea, for it is 
difficult to recall the time when either constituted 
a novelty for me. If there were truth in the 
theory of transmigration of the soul, mine ought 
to be a remnant of a sailor’s, or a child’s born at 
sea. The big vessel inspired me with no fears, 
but an acute sensation of delight. The ropes, 
the sailors, the shouting, the wonderful file of 
porters laden with trunks and portmanteaus, 
cases and boxes dropping into mysterious depths 
with such an awful suggestion of fatality, the tri- 

ii6 


Autobiography of a Child 

umphant assertion of our herded insignificance, 
the captain's air of deity upon the bridge above, 
the marvels of the cabins below, and the little 
perilous stairs one rather slid than walked down, 
and the rapture of climbing up again from the 
stuffy dimness into the grey brine-tasting air, to 
laugh aloud in the intoxication of fear as the ship 
rose and fell upon the swell of a choppy grey sea 
rushing into the river’s mouth. 

It was sad to be alone, to be going away at 
seven from one’s land and home among un- 
known barbarians; but for one strange hour I 
was not to be pitied, so quivering with pleasure 
was this first taste of adventure. By-and-by I 
grew stunned and quiescent, and was glad to sit 
still, curled up in some pretty lady’s lap, where 
my cheek rested luxuriously against soft, warm 
fur. But for the moment I was too eager to 
see everything, follow every curious movement 
with childhood’s wide alert gaze, hear every- 
thing, understand everything. 

My stepfather, like a big, good-natured man, 
humoured me, and we seemed to travel together 
hand-in-hand over an entire world, looking at 
all sorts of odd things, and listening to all sorts 
of odd noises. It was less beautiful, to be sure, 
but how much more interesting than the panto- 


Autobiography of a Child 

mime! I provoked a shout of laughter from a 
man in a greatcoat with a tremendous black 
beard, by clamouring to know where the sharks 
were. Before the answer could come, a bell rang 
sharply, and somebody sang out “All ashore I” 

“Good-bye, Angy, and God bless you! Be 
a good child, now, and don’t fret,” said my 
stepfather, stooping to gather me to him, and 
there was a break in his voice I had once be- 
fore heard, when he found me with dead Stevie in 
my arms. 

I can imagine what a piteous little object I 
must have looked, so frail and fair and small, 
standing alone on the big deck, without a hand 
to clasp, a fond smile to encourage me, lips to 
kiss away my tears. But he was too much of 
the careless, good-tempered Irishman to allow 
unpleasant emotions to trouble him except in a 
vague and transient way. Now I know how he 
would blink away the sad vision, and as he 
turned from me with a cheery “Don’t fret,” he 
waved his hand encouragingly, and his golden 
beard shone brightly in the subdued morning 
lights. He was a brave picture at all times, so 
smiling and handsome, and tall, and big, with 
the clearest blue eyes I have ever seen and the 
most winning of gestures. 

ii8 


Autobiography of a Child 

I was straining to watch the last of him, forc- 
ing my passage through skirts and trousers, like 
an excited mouse, when a lady caught me up in 
her arms and held me while I frantically shook 
my handkerchief, and he to the last stood on the 
wharf, kissing his hand and waving his hat to 
me, as if I were a grown-up person. I was en- 
chanted with his gallant air and fine courtesy, 
and flung him kisses with both hands. Then I 
buried my head in the lady’s fur, and sobbed as 
if my heart would break. 

Ireland was receding from me, the ship was 
rocking, there was a sullen deafening roar of 
steam, and I could no longer discern the one 
familiar figure I gazed for in the dim indis- 
tinguishable crowd on the thin, dark shoreline. 
The only world I knew was fading fast before my 
wet glance, and in terror of another I clasped 
the strange lady’s neck, and shivered into her 
soothing furs. 


119 


Chapter XIII. 


AT LYSTERBY. 

A BORN traveller, the vagabond’s instinct of 
forming pleasant friendships along the highroads 
that are buried with the last hand-shake showed 
itself on this my first voyage, and has never for- 
saken me throughout an accidented and varied 
career. I might have treasured sheaves of visit- 
ing-cards with names in every language bearing 
addresses in every possible town of Europe and 
Asia and numbers of American States. On this 
occasion no names or cards were exchanged be- 
tween me and the lady with the sealskin coat. 
But she adopted me for the hours that passed 
until we reached Crewe, when I was ejected 
from the warm home of her lap, and cast out 
into the cold of a winter’s night. 

She led me by the hand to look again at the 
ropes and the sailors, and tumble down and 
scramble up the companion-stairs, while Sister 
Clare groaned and prayed in her cabin. Indeed, 
I may say that I had forgotten all about my 


120 


Autobiography of a Child 

veiled jailor, and, my tears once dried, prattled 
delightedly to this pretty sympathetic creature, 
whose lovely furs and wide hat of black plumes 
and black velvet made of her a princess of fairy- 
land. Then when the caprices of the sea dis- 
tressed us in our wanderings, I fell asleep in 
her lap, luxurious and happy, being quite at rest 
now about the sharks, since my new friend had 
patiently assured me there was nothing to fear 
from them. 

I can now imagine what a quaint picture this 
motherly young lady, with the softly folding 
arms and the humid dusky glance, that was in 
itself the sweetest of caresses, may have made 
afterwards of our friendship, the tenderness with 
which she would sketch my portrait and repeat 
my childish confidences, the pity and indigna- 
tion with which my forlornness must have filled 
her. A child with a home, a mother, a family, 
cast adrift on a grey winter’s sea! Travelling 
from one land to another, like a valueless packet 
given in charge to a stranger! 

I hardly remember our parting. It was late, 
and I was dreaming, heaven knows of what, — 
of the chocolate drops she had given me, or of 
the dear little trays of apples Bessy the apple- 
woman sold down at Kildare. Hard arms se- 


I2I 


Autobiography of a Child 

curely caught me, and whisked me out of my 
delicious nest. Instead of warm fur against my 
cheek, I felt a blast of black-grey air, and with 
a howl of dismay I found myself blinking in the 
noisy glitter of a big station. The lady bent 
her charming head out of the window, smiling 
sadly at me from under the heavy shadow of 
her velvet plumed hat. I felt that she parted 
from me reluctantly, and knew that she had 
given me a passing shelter in her kind heart. 

The night outside seemed bitterly cold with- 
out her protecting tenderness, and I made a 
stoic effort to swallow my tears, and let myself 
be dragged ferociously by Sister Qare, for 
whom I was merely baggage, to the Birming- 
ham train. As for impressions, these were sta- 
tionary, not going beyond the voice and furs 
of my new friend, and I was far too sorry and 
sleepy and weary to note anything fresh. 

Lysterby, I have since been informed, is an 
ugly little town; but in those remote, uncritical 
days it appeared to me the centre of loveliness. 
Flowers are rare in Ireland, and here roses, red 
and white, grew wild and luxuriant along the 
lanes. But to an imaginative and romantic 
child, a place so peopled with legend and gay 
and tragic historical figures could not fail to be 


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Autobiography of a Child 

beautiful. In one of the common streets you 
looked up and saw the painted bust of a me- 
dieval knave, craning his ruffianly neck out of 
a window-frame, and the fellow, you were told, 
answered to the name of Peeping Tom. In- 
stantly the street ceased to be real, and you were 
pitched pell-mell into the heart of romance. 

I have not seen the place since childhood; 
but it remains in memory blotted, fragmentary, 
picturesque, an old-fashioned little town, with 
spired churches, rough, clean little streets, rare 
passers-by, never so hurried that the double file 
from the Ivies, under the guard of the austere 
ladies of Mercy, did not attract their attention, 
and sometimes with discomposing emphasis, as 
when the little street blackguards would shout 
after us: — 

“ Catholics, Catholics, quack, quack, quack. 

Go to the devil and never come back!” 

I remember the Craven Arms, a medieval inn 
all hung with roses and ivy, where my parents 
stayed when they came to see me, and where my 
sister and I slept in a long low-beamed cham- 
ber, with windows made of a surprising pattern 
of tiny diamond squares and green lattices that 
excited our enthusiastic admiration. I remem- 
ber the bowling-green, that appeared to roll like 


123 


Autobiography of a Child 

a sea straight to the sky, and the long, long 
roads with fields on either side, and the great 
historic ruin that has given its name to one of 
Scott’s novels. 

To me it is impossible to recall the leafy lanes, 
rose-scented; the narrow pavements and sleepy 
little shops; the great pageant, when the town’s 
legend became for thrilled infants an afternoon 
of fugitive and barbaric splendour, — without 
evoking vague scenes from history, and mar- 
shalling before the mind’s eye brilliant and 
memorable figures. Dull enough, I have no 
doubt, for those outside the convent walls, who 
had to live its dull life: no discord between the 
outlying farmsteads and the scarcely competi- 
tive shops ; the time of day not too eagerly 
noted, in spite of the fame of its watches; and 
the vociferations of the newsvendors a thing un- 
known. But sectarian spirit ran pretty high, 
if I remember rightly, and Lysterby was repre- 
sented in Parliament by a fierce anti-Catholic, 
whose dream, we imagined, it was to hang all 
Jesuits and deport the nuns. His name was 
whispered within the convent walls in awed 
undertones, as a pagan persecutor may have 
been spoken of in the Catacombs by the early 
Christians. But except the veiled ladies, roman- 


124 


Autobiography of a Child 

tically conscious of the proximity of perse- 
cution, with the joy of a name to pronounce in 
shuddering alarm, all Lysterby was at peace, and 
free to go to bed with the lambs, with nothing 
to disturb it in its morning dreams less melo- 
dious than the lark’s song. Private wars were 
of the usual anodyne and eternal character : 
Smith the baker not on speaking terms with 
Jones the butcher; Grubb the weaver, in em- 
bittered monotony of conviction, supported on 
unlimited quantities of beer, ready to assert 
every evening that Collins the miller, who lived 
on the other side of the common, was a scoun- 
drel. 

Of the troubles outside we little ones had no 
time to think. Our troubles within were abund- 
ant and absorbing, and no less absorbing and 
abundant were our small joys. There were ten 
of us only — ten queer, curious little girls; and 
one ragged specimen of the trousered sex — a 
horrid small boy, the scion of a distinguished 
house, whom the ladies of Mercy kept, long past 
the time, quaintly apparelled in black frocks and 
white pinafores, as an injudicious concession to 
claustral modesty. A boy of eight in skirts, with 
long brown curls upon his shoulders! 

To suit his raiment, nature made him the 


125 


Autobiography of a Child 

greatest little coward and minx of the lot of us. 
Beside him I felt myself a brave, a gentleman, 
a hero of adventure. He had all the vices I 
intuitively abhorred. He was spiteful, a tell- 
tale, an ignoble whiner; and before I was a 
month at the Ivies I was for him “that nasty 
little Irish girl,” whose fine furies terrified the 
wits out of his mean little body, whose frank 
boxes on a rascally small ear sent him into 
floods of tears, and whose masterly system of 
open persecution kept him ever in alarm, ever 
on the race to Sister This or Mother That. How 
we loathed that boy Frank ! 

On the other hand, I was speedily as popu- 
lar as a creature of legend — not by reason of 
my virtues, which, by a rare modesty, kept 
themselves concealed, but because of my high 
spirits, untamable once let loose; my imagina- 
tion, which incessantly devised fresh shudders 
for these timid and unimaginative children; my 
prodigality in invention, and my general insub- 
ordination. 

The cowed and suffering baby of Ireland on 
Saxon shores at once revealed the Irish rebel, 
the instinctive enemy of law and order. I was 
commander-in-chief in revolt, with a most sur- 
prising gift of the gab; a satanic impulse to hurl 
126 


Autobiography of a Child 

my small weak self against authority on all oc- 
casions, and an abnormal capacity for flying out 
at every one with power to do me harm. What- 
ever may be said of the value of my courage, 
its quality even I the owner (who should be the 
last to recognise it!), must admit to be admira- 
ble. Alas ! it was a virtue ever persistently 
wasted then as now. While it never procured 
me a single stroke of happiness or fortune, it 
has boundlessly added to the miseries of an im- 
prudent career. 

The start in Lysterby ends my patient mar- 
tyrdom. Here I became the active and abomi- 
nable little fiend unkindness and ill-management 
made of one of the gentlest and most sensitive 
of natures. The farther I travelled the road of 
childhood the more settled became my con- 
viction that grown-up humanity, which I grad- 
ually began to loath more than even I once had 
feared, was my general implacable enemy. I 
might have grown sly and slavish in this con- 
viction; but I am glad to say that I took the 
opposite course. I may be said to have planted 
myself against a moral wall and furiously defied 
all the authorities of Church and State ^^to come 
on,” hitting in blind recklessness out at every 
one, quite indifferent to blow and defeat, 


127 


Autobiography of a Child 

Little Angela of Kildare and Dublin, over 
whose sorrows I have invited the sympathetic 
reader to weep, was a pallid and pathetic figure. 
But Angela of Lysterby held her own — more 
even than her own, for she fought for others as 
well as for herself, and gave back (with a great 
deal more trouble at least) as much pain and 
affliction as she endured. 


128 


Chapter XIV. 


THE WHITE LADY OF LYSTERBY. 

Do the ladies of Lysterby continue to train 
atrociously and mismanage children, to starve 
and thwart them, as they did in those far-off 
days, so remote that on looking back it seems 
to me now that somebody else and not I, a 
pacific and indifferent woman, content with most 
things round about me, lived those five years 
of perpetual passion and frantic unhappiness? 
Or has the old convent vanished, and carried off 
its long tale of incompetence, ignorance, cruel 
stupidity, and futile vexation? 

For the seeds of many an illness were stored 
up in young bodies by systematic under-feed- 
ing, and hunger turned most of us into wistful 
little gluttons, gazing longingly into the cake- 
shops as we marched two by two through the 
tiny city, dreaming at night of Barmecide feasts, 
and envying the fate of the happier children at 
home, who devoured all the sweet things we 
with our empty little stomachs so bitterly re- 
membered. 


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Autobiography of a Child 

Sweet things only! Enough of bread-and- 
butter would have satisfied our craving. When 
one of us sickened and rejected the single thin 
slice of bread-and-butter allowed the children 
at breakfast, oh, the prayer and expectation of 
each pair of hungry eyes fixed upon the sufferer, 
to see to whom she would offer her neglected 
slice! The slice was cut in two, and usually 
offered, while the nun was not looking, to the 
children on either side. This miscarriage of ap- 
petite, we noted with regret, more frequently 
happened at the two tables of the big girls, 
where such windfalls were constantly amplify- 
ing the meagre breakfasts of somebody or other 
in long skirts. But we were only ten, and our 
appetite was pretty steady and never satisfied. 
Now it taxes all my heroism to visit the den- 
tist ; but then I knew each visit was a prospective 
joy, for, if I did not cry, the lay-teacher who con- 
ducted me thither always allowed me to buy a 
jam-tart, which I ate as slowly as possible in 
the confectioner’s shop, noting the ravages of 
my teeth in the cake of delight with melancholy 
and dismay. I so loved the recompense that 
I used to watch anxiously for the first sign of 
a shaky tooth, and the instant it was removed, I 
was sure to shriek out excitedly — 


130 


Autobiography of a Child 

“You see, Miss Lawson, I didn’t cry a bit.” 

But I would not have it thought that those 
early school-days were days of untempered bit- 
terness and constant ache. We were a merry 
lot of little savages as far as the authorities per- 
mitted us to enjoy ourselves, and life continually 
revealed its quaint surprises and thrilling ter- 
rors. I learnt to read with amazing rapidity, 
and my favourite books were of a kind liberally 
supplied by the convent library — Tyburn, won- 
derful tales of the escapes and underground ad- 
ventures of Jesuits, double walls, spring-doors, 
mysterious passages, whitened bones in long- 
forgotten boxes. Thanks to my ingenuity and 
vivid imagination, our days became for us all 
a wild romance. Relegated to the infirmary 
by prolonged illnesses, the result of semi-starva- 
tion, naturally I had leisure to read laboriously 
various volumes of this edifying literature. 

The infirmary itself was a chamber of legend. 
It was a kind of out-building to which led a 
long corridor behind just the sort of door my 
mind was fixed upon, a mere panel that in no 
way differed from the rest of the wainscoted 
wall, the very door for a Jesuit to vanish 
through from the pursuit of mailed myrmidons. 
At the end of the corridor you went down a 


Autobiography of a Child 

flight of stairs, then up another flight into a 
pretty little green-and-white room, low beamed, 
with oozy cots, and long windows looking out 
beyond the rose-bushes, and a slip of velvet lawn, 
where a terrible-looking and most enchanting- 
alley, with the trees meeting overhead, seemed 
to lead straight into the twilight of ghostland. 

It did not take me long to see a white lady 
slip down that alley, like a white mist swallowed 
up in sombre night. No power on earth could 
have convinced me that I had not seen a ghost, 
and I stood at the window straining my eyes out 
in waiting for the white lady’s return, with both 
hands frantically clasped upon my heart, which 
beat as if it projected a spring through my 
throat. White-faced and appalled, I hurried to 
the infirmarian, who brought me in something 
hot to take, and screamed out, “Oh, I’ve seen 
her, I’ve seen her! she was all in white, a real 
ghost 1” 

That night I was in full fever, and my poor 
silly little story-books were taken away. But 
they had done their work, and by the time I 
was well again my imagination had wrought 
out the stupendous fiction that was to communi- 
cate its thrill even to some of the big girls, and 
send a dozen of little girls crawling upon their 


132 


Autobiography of a Child 

knees and hands, victims of my imagination. 
The white lady I conceived to be the ghost 
of a beautiful Catholic persecuted in the days 
of Tyburn. She lived in this old manor-house, 
for we knew that the Ivies had been a manor. 
In her terror she had flown through the panel- 
door leading to the infirmary. The flight of 
stairs, of course, in those days continued be- 
yond the floor, and the subterranean passage 
probably led round by the courtyard to the gate 
at the end of the dark alley. I decided that 
there must be several whitened bones under the 
floor of this corridor and the infirmary, and so 
convinced all my companions, even Frank, that 
whining little cad whom we all so heartily de- 
tested, that on play-days, during the holidays, 
on Sunday afternoons, every moment we could 
spend in secrecy, in turn two of us (compan- 
ionship was necessary to add to the excitement 
of labour and the terrors of consequences) would 
crawl away from the rest with penknives and 
pencils, and assiduously cut away at the wooden 
floor until we had made a hole large enough to 
insert our little fists underneath. It must be 
admitted we always found something hard and 
white, which proved my theory, and those bits 
of dry chips we handled in awe. 


133 


Autobiography of a Child 

For some singular months we lived upon this 
romance, and lived in it so intensely that all 
else became but a dream. Dream-like we ac- 
complished our tasks, filled our slates with fig- 
ures, copied headlines, recited verses, the dates 
of English history, wrought our samplers, and 
answered the responses of the rosary. But our 
thoughts, ourselves, were elsewhere, with the 
next beam to make a hole in, and the assurance 
I had given them that I had seen through a 
chink of the infirmary floor a white hand like 
marble. I was the first victim of my own in- 
vention, for I honestly believed all I said. I 
will not say that vanity was an alien factor in 
the unconscious invention. I enjoyed my power, 
my triumph, the fear I had inspired and so 
thrillingly shared — above all, I enjoyed the pop- 
ularity it gave me as leader of a band of mis- 
creants. 

I do not remember how or why the fever 
abated. Were we found out and punished for 
mutilated planks? We so exaggerated the mys- 
tery of our conspiracy that it would be strange 
indeed if it were not discovered. But the end 
of the romance is completely effaced from mem- 
ory. It has left no impression whatever. I see 
myself in turn frozen and fevered with terror, 


134 


Autobiography of a Child 

digging at every mortal spot of the convent open 
to the depredations of my penknife, in a wild 
hunt for bones and secret passages and forbidden 
stairs. I see the whole school enthralled by my 
ardent whim. And that is all. 


135 


Chapter XV. 


AN EXILE IN REVOLT. 

What surprises me most when I recall those 
days is my own rapid development. The tiny 
inarticulate pensive creature of Ireland is, as if 
by magic, turned into a turbulent adventurer, 
quick with initiation, with a ready and violent 
word for my enemies, whom I regarded as 
many, with a force of character that compelled 
children older than myself to follow me; im- 
perious, passionate, and reckless. How did it 
come about? It needed long months of un- 
happiness at home to make me revolt against 
the most drastic rule, and here it sufficed that a 
nun should doubt my word to turn me into a 
glorified outlaw. 

I confess that whatever the deficiences of my 
home training, I had not been brought up to 
think that anybody lied. My mother never 
seemed to think it possible that any of her chil- 
dren could lie. In fact, lying was the last vice 
of childhood I was acquainted with. You told 


136 


Autobiography of a Child 

the truth as you breathed, without thinking of 
it, for the simple reason that it could not pos- 
sibly occur to you not to tell the truth. This 
was, I knew, how I took it, though I did not 
reason so. I believe it was that villain Frank 
who broke a statue of an angel, and behind 
my back asserted that he had seen me do it. I 
had no objection in the world to break forty 
statues if it came in the day’s work, and so far 
from concealing my misdeeds, I was safe to 
glory in any iniquity I could accomplish. So 
when charged with the broken angel, I said, 
saucily enough I have no doubt — oh! I have 
no wish to make light of the provocations of 
my enemies — that I hadn’t done it. 

The Grand Inquisitor was a lovely slim young 
nun, with a dainty gipsy face, all brown and 
golden, full-cheeked, pink-lipped, black-browed. 
I see her still, the exquisite monster, with her 
long slim fingers, as delicate as ivory, and the 
perfidious witchery of her radiant dark smile. 

‘‘You mustn’t tell lies, Angela. You were 
seen to break the statue.” 

I stood up in vehement protest, words pour- 
ed from me in a flood; they gushed from me 
like life-blood flowing from my heart, and in my 
passion I flung my books on the floor, and 


137 


Autobiography of a Child 

vowed I would never eat again, but that I’d die 
first, to make them all feel miserable because 
they had murdered me. And then the pretty 
Inquisitor carried me off, dragging me after her 
with that veiled brutality of gesture that marks 
your refined tyrant. I was locked up in the 
old community-room, then reserved for guests, 
a big white chamber, with a good deal of heavy 
furniture in it. 

“You’ll stay here, Angela, until I come to 
let you out,” she hissed at me. 

I heard the key turn in the lock, and my heart 
was full of savage hate. I sat and brooded long 
on the vengeance I desired to wreak. Sister 
Esmeralda had said she would come at her good 
will to let me out. “Very well,” thought I, 
wickedly; “when she comes she’ll not find it so 
easy to get in.” 

My desire was to thwart her in her design to 
free me when she had a mind to. My object 
was to die of hunger alone and forsaken in that 
big white chamber, and so bring remorse and 
shame upon my tyrants. So, with laboured 
breath and slow impassioned movements, I 
dragged over to the door all the furniture I could 
move. In my ardour I accomplished feats I 
could never have aspired to in saner moments. 

138 


Autobiography of a Child 

A frail child of eight, I nevertheless wheeled 
arm-chairs, a sofa, a heavy writing-table, every 
seat except a small stool, and even a cupboard, 
and these I massed carefully at the door as an 
obstruction against the entrance of my enemy. 

And then I sat down on the stool in the mid- 
dle of the chamber, and tore into shreds with 
hands and teeth a new holland overall. Evening 
began to fall, and the light was dim. My passion 
had exhausted itself, and I was hungry and tired 
and miserable. Had any one else except Sister 
Esmeralda come to the door, I should have be- 
haved differently, for I was a most manageable 
little creature when not under the influence of 
the terrible exasperation injustice always pro- 
voked in me. But there she stood, after the re- 
peated efforts of the gardener called up to force 
open my prison door, haughty, contemptuous, 
and triumphant, with me, poor miserable little 
me, surrounded by the shreddings of my holland 
pinafore, in her ruthless power. 

A blur of light, the anger of madness, the 
dreadful tense sensation of my helplessness, and 
before I knew what I had done I had caught up 
the stool and wildly hurled it at her triumphant 
visage. Oh, how I hated Sister Esmeralda ! how 
I hated her! 


139 


Autobiography of a Child 

The moment was one of exceptional sol- 
emnity. I was not scolded, or slapped, or 
roughly treated. My crime was too appalling 
for such habitual treatment. One would think 
I already wore the black shroud of death, that 
the gallows stood in front of me, and beside it 
the coffin and the yawning grave, as my enemy, 
holding my feeble child’s hand in a vice, marched 
me down the corridor into the dormitory, where 
a lay-sister was commanded to fetch my strong 
boots, my hat and cloak. 

The children were going joyously off to sup- 
per, with here and there, I can imagine, an awed 
whisper in my concern, as the lay-sister took my 
hand in hers; and in silence by her side, in the 
grey twilight, I walked from the Ivies beyond 
the common down to the town convent, where 
only the mothers dwelt. I knew something 
dreadful was going to happen to me, and being 
tired of suffering and tired of my short troubled 
life, I hoped even then that it would prove death. 
I did not care. It was so long since I had 
thought it worth while caring! 

And so I missed the lovely charm of that 
silent walk through the unaccustomed twilight, 
with quaint little shops getting ready their even- 
ing illumination, and free and happy persons 


140 


Autobiography of a Child 

walking to and fro, full of the joy of being, 
full of the bliss of freedom. My heart was dead 
to hope, my intelligence, weary from excess of 
excitement and pain, was dull to novelty. 

In the town convent I was left awhile in ach- 
ing solitude in the brown parlour, with its pious 
pictures and big crucifix. I strained eye and 
ear through the silent dusk, and was relieved 
when the superioress — a sort of female pontiff, 
whom we children saw in reverential stupefac- 
tion on scarce feast-days, when she addressed 
us from such heights as Moses on the mountain 
might have addressed a group of sparrows — with 
two other nuns entered. It looked like death, 
and already the heart within me was dead. I 
know so well now how I looked: white, blue- 
veined, blue-lipped, sullen, and indifferent. 

My wickedness was past sermonising. I was 
simply led up-stairs to a brown cell, and here 
the red-cheeked lay-sister, a big brawny crea- 
ture, stripped me naked. Naked, mind, though 
convent rules forbid the whipping of girls. I 
was eight, exceedingly frail and delicate. The 
superioress took my head tightly under her arm, 
and the brawny red-cheeked lay-sister scourged 
my back with a three-pointed whip till the blood 


Autobiography of a Child 

gushed from the long stripes, and I fainted. I 
never uttered a groan, and I like to remember 
this infantine proof of my pride and resolute 
spirit. 


142 


Chapter XVI. 


MY FIRST CONFESSION. 

The sequel is enfolded in mystery. Was I long 
unconscious? Was I long ill? Was there any 
voice among the alarmed nuns lifted in my 
favour? Or was the secret kept among the 
superioress, the lay-sister who thrashed me, and 
the doctor? As a Catholic in a strong and 
bigoted Protestant centre, in the pay of a Cath- 
olic community, it is not unreasonable to sup- 
pose him anxious to avoid a scandal. For out- 
side there was the roaring lion, the terrible mem- 
ber for Lysterby, seeking the Catholics he might 
devour! That satanic creature who dreamed at 
night of Tyburn, and, if he could, would have 
proscribed every priest and nun of the realm I 
Picture the hue and cry in Parliament and out 
of it, if it were known that a baby girl had been 
thrashed by strong, virile hands, as with a Rus- 
sian knout, with the ferocity of blood-thirsty 
jailers instead of the gentleness of holy women 
striving to inculcate precepts of virtue and Chris- 
tian charity in the breast of a tiny reprobate ! 


143 


Autobiography of a Child 

And ladies, too, devoted to the worship of mercy 
and of Mary, the maiden of sorrow, the mild 
mother of humanity. 

I know I lay long in bed, — ^that my wounds, 
deep red open stripes, were dressed into scars 
by lint and sweet oil and herbs. The doctor, a 
cheery fellow with a Scottish name, came and 
sat by my bedside, and gave me almond-drops, 
and begged me repeatedly ‘^to look up.’’ The 
pavement outside was rough, the little city street 
was narrow, and the flies rumbling past from the 
station to the Craven Arms shook my bed. The 
noise was novel, and excited me. I thought of 
my imaginary friend of the Ivies, the white lady, 
and wondered if any one had ever thrashed 
her. The cook. Sister Joseph, from time to time 
stole up-stairs and offered me, by way of con- 
solation, maybe a bribe, a Shrewsbury biscuit, a 
jam-tart, a piece of seed-cake. 

Once the pain of my lacerated back sub- 
sided I was not at all bored. It was good to 
lie in a fresh white bed and listen dreamily to 
the discreet murmurs of a provincial town in 
the quiet convent-house, have nothing to do, no 
scrapes to get into, hear no scolding voices, 
and have plenty of nice things to eat, after the 
long famine of nine interminable months. 


144 


Autobiography of a Child 

I do not remember when it was she first came 
to me. She was a slim, oldish nun, with a white 
delicate visage and eyes full of a wistful sadness, 
neither blue nor grey. Her voice was very low, 
and gave me the same intense pleasure with which 
the soft touch of her thin small hands thrilled 
me. She was called Mother Aloysius, and paint- 
ed pictures for the chapel and for the convent. 
Did she know what had happened, and had she 
taken the community’s debt to me upon her lean 
shoulders? Or was I merely for her a sick and 
naughty little girl, to whom she was drawn by 
sympathy ? 

She never spoke of my whipping, nor did 1. 
Perhaps with the unconscious delicacy of sen- 
sitive childhood I divined that it would pain 
her. More probably still, I was only too glad 
to be enfolded in the mild warmth of her un- 
questioning tenderness. Wickedness dropped 
from me as a wearisome garment, and, divested 
of its weight, I trotted after her heels like a lit- 
tle lapdog. She took me with her everywhere; 
into the big garden where she tended the flowers, 
and where she allowed me to water and dig my- 
self out of breath, fondly persuaded that the 
fate of the flowers next year depended upon my 
exertions ; to her work-room, where in awed ad- 


145 


Autobiography of a Child 

miration I watched her paint, and held her 
brushes and colours for her ; to the chapel where 
she changed the flowers, and where I gathered 
the stalks into little hills and swept them into 
my pinafore. And all the time I talked, cease- 
lessly, volubly, — not of past sufferings, nor of 
present pain, but of the things that surprised and 
perplexed me, of the countless things I wanted 
to do, of the tales of Tyburn and the white lady. 

When I was well enough to go back to daily 
woe and insufficient food, I was dressed in hat 
and jacket and strong boots, and while I stood 
in the hall the awful superioress issued from the 
community-room and looked at me coldly. 

‘‘You have had your lesson, Angela. You 
will be a good child in future, I hope,’^ she 
said, and touched my shoulder with a lifeless 
gesture. 

The mischievous impulse of saucy speech and 
wicked glance died when I encountered the 
gentle prayer of my new friend’s faded eyes. 
I was only a baby, but I understood as well as 
if I had been a hundred what those kind and 
troubled eyes said, glancing at me behind the 
woman she must have known I hated. “Be 
good, dear child; be silent, be respectful. For- 
give, forget, for my sake.” I swallowed the angry 
146 


Autobiography of a Child 

words I longed to utter on the top of a sob, 
and went and held up my cheek to Mother 
Aloysius. 

“You’re a brave little girl, Angela,” she said, 
softly. “You’ll see, if you are good, that rev- 
erend mother will let you come down and spend 
a nice long day with me soon again; and I’ll 
take you to water the flowers and fill the vases 
in the chapel, and watch me paint up-stairs. 
Good-bye.” 

She kissed me on both cheeks, not in the flesh- 
less kiss of the nun, but with dear human 
warmth of lips, and her fingers lingered tenderly 
about my head. Did she suspect the sacrifice 
I had made to her kindness? — the fierce and 
wrathful words I had projected to hurl at the 
head of the superioress, and that I had kept back 
to please her? 

At the Ivies I maintained a steadfast silence 
upon what had happened. I cannot now trace 
the obscure reasons of my silence, which must 
have pleased the nuns, for nobody ever knew 
about my severe whipping. Thanks to the benefi- 
cent influences of my new friend, I was for a 
while a model of all the virtues. I studied hard, 
absorbed pages of useful knowledge in the 
“Child’s Guide,” and mastered the abstruse con- 


147 


Autobiography of a Child 

tents of Cardinal Wiseman’s "‘History of Eng- 
land.” At the end of a month, to the amazement 
of everybody and to my own dismay, I was re- 
warded with a medal of good conduct, and 
formally enrolled in that virtuous body, the Chil- 
dren of the Angels, and wore a medal attached 
to a brilliant green ribbon. 

This transient period of grace, felt no doubt 
by all around me to be precarious and unstable, 
was deemed the fitting moment for my first con- 
fession. What a baby of eight can have to con- 
fess I know not. The value of such an institu- 
tion for the infantine conscience escapes me. 
But there can be no question of its enormous 
sensational interest for us all. Two new chil- 
dren had made their appearance since my 
tempestuous arrival. They belonged to the 
band, as well as an idiot girl two years older 
than I, and now deemed wise enough to crave 
pardon for sins she could not possibly cc^m- 
mit. We carefully studied the “Examination 
of Conscience,” and spelt out the particularly 
big words with a thrill : they looked nice mys- 
terious sins, the sort of crimes we felt we would 
gladly commit if we had the chance. 

I went about sombre and dejected, under the 
conviction that I must have sinned the sin 


148 


Autobiography of a Child 

against the Holy Ghost, and Polly Evans won- 
dered if adultery figured upon the list of her mis- 
doings. She was sure, however, that she had 
not defrauded the labourer of his daily wage, 
whatever that might be, for the simple reason 
that she had never met a labourer. I was tor- 
tured with a fresh sensational doubt. My foster- 
mother’s cousin at Kildare was a very nice lab- 
ourer who often had given me sweets. Could I, 
in a moment of temporary aberration, have de- 
frauded him of his wage? And then adultery! 
If Polly was sure she had committed adultery, 
might I not also have so deeply offended against 
heaven? I had not precisely killed anybody, 
but had I not desired to kill Sister Esmeralda 
the day I threw the stool at her? 

And so we travelled conscientiously, like hum- 
ble, but, in the very secret depths of our being, 
self-admiring pilgrims, over the weary and 
profitless road of self-examination, and assured 
ourselves with a fervent thrill that we were in- 
deed miserable sinners. ‘I’ll never get into a 
passion again,” I swore to Polly Evans, like a 
monstrous little Puritan, and before an hour 
had passed was thirsting for the blood of some 
offender. 

I even went so far as to include Sister Esmer- 


149 


Autobiography of a Child 

alda and Frank in my offer of general amnesty 
to humanity; and indited at some nun’s sugges- 
tion a queer epistle to my mother, something in 
the tone the prodigal son from afar might have 
used writing to his father when he first decided 
to abandon the husks and swine, etc. I boldly 
announced my intention of forsaking the path of 
wickedness, with a humble confession of hitherto 
having achieved supremacy in that nefarious 
kingdom, and of walking henceforth with the 
saints. 

I added a practical postscript, that I was al- 
ways very hungry, and stated with charming 
candour that I did not like any of the nuns ex- 
cept Mother Aloysius, which was rather a modi- 
fication of the exuberant burst of virtue ex- 
pressed on the first page. This postscript was 
judiciously altered past recognition, and I was 
ordered to copy it out : 'T am very happy at 
Lysterby. All the dear nuns are so kind to me. 
We shall have a little feast soon. Please, dear 
mamma, send me some money.” 

If the money ever came, it was naturally con- 
fiscated by the dear nuns. It was not money 
we mites needed, but bread-and-butter and a 
cup of good milk, or a plate of simple sustain- 
ing porridge. However, for the moment the 
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Autobiography of a Child 

excitement of confession sustained us. Having 
communicated to each other the solemn impres- 
sion that we had broken all the Commandments, 
committed the seven deadly sins, and made 
mockery of the four cardinal virtues, the next 
thing to decide was to what length of repent- 
ance we were bound to go. Polly Evans' en- 
thusiasm was so exalted that she yearned to 
follow the example of the German emperor we 
had read of who walked, or crawled on his knees, 
I forget which, to Rome, and made a public con- 
fession to the Pope. But this we felt to be an 
immodest flight of fancy in a little girl who had 
done nothing worth speaking of. She was like 
my Kildare companion Mary Jane, who con- 
stantly saw herself in a personal scuffle with 
Queen Victoria. 

When the great day came we were bidden 
to stay in the chapel after the rest, and then 
were taken down to the town convent, with in- 
structions to keep our minds fixed upon the 
awful sacrament of confession as we walked 
two and two through the streets. 

“Remember, children," said that infamous 
Sister Esmeralda, prettier than ever, as she fixed 
me with a deadly glance, “to tell a lie in the 


Autobiography of a Child 

confessional box is to tell a lie to the Holy 
Ghost. You may be struck dead for it.” 

Did she mean that for me? Oh, why had 
I so rashly vowed myself to a life of virtue? 
Why had I so precipitously chosen the com- 
panionship and example of the saints? Why 
had I read the lives of St. Louis of Gonzaga, 
St. Stanislaus of Kotska, and other lamb-like 
creatures, and in a fit of admiration sworn to 
resemble them? — since all these good resolu- 
tions debarred me from flinging another stool 
at that lovely hostile visage. But having elected 
momentarily to play the part of a shocking little 
prig, I swallowed my wrath, with a compunc- 
tious sensation, and felt a glow all over to think 
I was already so much of a saint. 

In the convent chapel, with our throbbing 
hearts in our mouths, we knelt, a diminutive 
row, in our Sunday uniform (I have worn so 
many convent uniforms that I am rather mixed 
about them, and cannot remember which was 
blue on Sunday and which was black, but the 
Lysterby Sunday uniform I know was black). 
Polly Evans was the first to disappear, swal- 
lowed up in the awful box. She issued forth, 
tremulous and wide-eyed, and I followed her, 
pallid and quaking. The square grating was 


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Autobiography of a Child 

closed, and the green curtain enfolded me in a 
terrific dusk. I felt sick and cold with fright. 
What was going to happen? Could something 
spring suddenly out and clutch me? Was the 
devil behind me? Had my guardian angel for- 
saken me ? I had read a great deal of late about 
yawning abyss,” “a black pit,” a ‘‘bottom- 
less hole.” Was I going to tell a lie to the 
Holy Ghost unknowing, and so be struck dead 
like, like ? 

The square slid swiftly back, and I saw a dim 
man’s profile through the grating. Had I seen 
Father Morris clear before me, my fears would 
instantly have been quelled, for he was a grace- 
ful, aristocratic, soft-voiced man, quick to cap- 
tivate little children by his winning smile. But 
that dim formless thing behind the grating, what 
was it? They told me the priest in the con- 
fessional was God. The statement was not such 
that any childish imagination could grasp. The 
sickness of terror overcame me, and I, whom 
the rough sea of the Irish Channel had not 
harmed, fell down in a dreadful fit of nausea that 
left me prostrate for days. 


153 


Chapter XVII. 


THE CHRISTMAS HAMPERS. 

Nobody but a hungry and excitable child, exiled 
from home and happiness, bereft of toys and 
kisses, can conceive the mad delight of re- 
ceiving a Christmas hamper at school. Picture, 
if you can, a minute regiment with eager faces 
pasted against the frost-embroidered window- 
panes, watching a van drive up the Ivies’ path, 
knowing that a hamper is coming for some for- 
tunate creature — but for whom? 

Outside the land is all bridal white, and the 
lovely snow looks like deep-piled white velvet 
upon the lawn, and like the most delicate lace 
upon the branches. We see distinctly the driver, 
with a big good-humoured face of the hue of 
cochineal under his snow-covered hat, and he 
nods cheerfully to his enthusiastic admirers. He 
would be a churl indeed to remain unmoved by 
our vociferous salutations, as we stamp our feet, 
and clap our hands, and shout with all the force 
of our infant lungs. 


154 


Autobiography of a Child 

For the Christmas hamper, announced by let- 
ter from my stepfather, meant for me the un- 
known. But every Christmas afterwards I was 
wiser, and not for thait less glad. A hamper 
meant a turkey, a goose, a large plum-cake with 
Angela in beautiful pink letters upon the snow- 
frost ground. It meant boxes of prunes, of 
sweets, of figs, lots of oranges and apples, hot 
sherry and water, hot port and water in the 
dormitory of a cold night, all sorts of surpris- 
ing toys and picture-books. But it did not im- 
ply by any means as much of those good things 
(I speak of the eatables) for me as my parents 
fancied. The nuns generously helped themselves 
to the lion’s share of fruit and wine and fowls. 

But the cake, best joy of all, was left to us 
untouched, and also the sweets. The big round 
beauty was placed in front of me; with a huge 
knife, a lay-sister sliced it up, and I, with a 
proud, important air, sent round the plate among 
hungry and breathless infants, who had each 
one already devoured her slice with her eyes 
before touching it with her lips. 

And at night in the dormitory, all those bright 
eyes and flushed little faces, as we laughed and 
shouted and danced, disgraceful small topers 
that we were, drinking my stepfather’s sherry 


155 


Autobiography of a Child 

and port — drinking ourselves into rosy paradises, 
where children lived upon plum-cake and hot 
negus. 

Oh, the joy of those Christmas excesses, after 
the compulsory sobriety of long ascetic months ! 
As each child received a hamper, not quite so 
bountifully and curiously filled as mine, for my 
stepfather was a typical Irishman — in the mat- 
ter of hospitality, of generosity, he always erred 
on the right side for others, and was as popular 
as a prince of legend, — for a fortnight we rev- 
elled in a fairyland of toffee and turkey, of 
sugared cakes and plum-pudding, of crackers 
and sweets, and apples and oranges and be- 
witching toys. Like heroes refreshed, we were 
then able to return to the frugality of daily fare 
— though, alas ! I fear this fugitive plenty and 
bliss made us early acquainted with the poet’s 
suffering in days of misery by the remember- 
ing of happier things. This was my candid 
epistle, soon after Christmas, despatched to Kil- 
dare : — 

“My dere Evryday Mama, — i dont like skule 
a bit. i cant du wat i like, i dont have enuf tu 
et. Nun of us have enuf tu et. We had enuf 
at crismas when everyboddy sent us lots of 

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Autobiography of a Child 

things. We were very glad i had luvly things 
it wos so nice but i dont like skule, its horid, 
theres a horid boy here, i bet him when he 
called me a savage. Sister Esmeralda said it 
first i dont like her. She teches me. tell Mary 
Jane to give my black dog 6 kisses, i want to go 
home i like yu and Louis and Mary Jane and 
Bessy the apel woman i want to dim tres like 
Johny Burke your affecshunat little girl. 

Angela."’ 

When this frank outpouring was subjected to 
revision, it ran : — 

^‘My dear Foster-Mamma, — I am very 
happy here with the dear nuns. I hope I shall 
remain with them a long while. We have such 
fun always. We learn ever so many nice things. 
We love our dear mistress. Sister Esmeralda. 
Reverend Mother had a cold, and we all prayed 
so hard for her, and now she is better. I want 
some money for her feast-day. We are going 
to give her a nice present. We had a play and 
a tea-party. Lady Wilhelmina Osborne’s little 
girl came over from the Abbey. I hope you 
are quite well. With love, your affectionate 

Angela.” 

All our mistresses were not like Sister Esmer- 


157 


Autobiography of a Child 

alda, a Spanish inquisitor in a shape of insidious 
charm, nor a burly brute like the lay-sister, who 
had so piously welted my naked back, nor a 
chill and frozen despot like the pallid superioress. 
Mother Aloysius was, of course, a far-off stained- 
glass vision, a superlative rapture in devotion, 
not suitable for daily wear, — a recompense after 
the prolonged austerities of virtue and self-denial, 
a soaring acquaintance with ecstatic admiration. 
But on a lower plane there were some younger 
nuns we found tolerable and sympathetic. There 
was Sister Anne, who taught us to play at snow- 
balls, and took a ball on her nose with compan- 
ionable humour in the midst of our shrieking ap- 
probation. There was Sister Ignatius, who in- 
spired us with terpsichorean ambition by danc- 
ing a polka with one of the big girls down the 
long study hall, to the amiable murmur of — 

“Can you dance a polka? Yes, I can. 

Up and down the room with a nice young man”; 

or upon a more imaginative flight — 

“My mother said that I never should 
Play with the gypsies in the wood; 

If I did, she would say. 

Naughty girl to disobey.” 


Her great feat was, however, the Varsovienne, 

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Autobiography of a Child 

which she told us was a Polish dance, and that 
Poland was a bleak and unfortunate country on 
the confines of Russia. Ever afterwards I asso- 
ciated the sprightly Sister Ignatius with a polar 
bear, especially when I watched her dance the 
‘‘Varsovienne,’' and fling her head over her 
shoulders in a most laughable way, just as I 
imagined a bear would do if he took to dancing 
the dance of Poland. 

Mother Catherine is a less agreeable memory. 
I see her still, a tall gaunt woman in coif and 
black veil, with austere grey eyes. She used to 
watch us in the refectory, and whenever a greedy 
infant kept a rare toothsome morsel for the wind- 
up of a frugal meal. Mother Catherine would 
sweep down and confiscate the reserved luxury. 
“My child, you will make an act of mortification 
for the good of your soul.’’ I leave you to 
imagine the child’s dislike of her immortal soul, 
as the goody was carried off. 


159 


Chapter XVIII. 


MR. PARKER THE DANCING-MASTER. 

The joy of my second year at Lysterby was 
Mr. Parker the dancing-master. Was he evoked 
from pantomime and grotesque legend by the 
sympathetic genius of Sister Ignatius? We were 
all solemnly convened, in our best shoes and 
frocks, to a great meeting in the big hall to 
make the acquaintance of our dancing-master, 
and learn the polite steps of society. A wizen 
cross-looking little creature stood at the top of 
the long room, and as we entered in file, all agog, 
and ready enough, heaven knows, to shriek for 
nothing, from sheer animal spirits, he bowed 
to us, as I suppose they bowed in the good old 
days of Queen Anne. For Queen Anne was 
his weakness. I wonder why, since she was 
neither the queen of grace nor of beauty. 

I recall the gist of his first speech: “We 
are now, young ladies, about to study one of 
the most necessary and the most serious of arts, 
the art of dancing. It is the art of dancing that 
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Autobiography of a Child 

makes ladies and gentlemen of us all. In a ball- 
room the awkward, those who cannot dance, are 
in disgrace. Nobody minds them, nobody ad- 
mires them. They have not the tone of society. 
They are poor creatures, who, for all society 
cares, might never have been born. What it be- 
hoves you, young ladies, is to acquire the tone 
of society from your earliest years, and it is only 
by a steady practice of the art of dancing that 
you may hope to acquire it. Practice, young 
ladies, makes perfect — remember that.” 

Ever afterwards, his first question, before be- 
ginning each week’s lesson, was : ^‘What does 
practice do, young ladies?” and we were all ex- 
pected to reply in a single ringing voice : ^^Makes 
perfect, Mr. Parker.” Children are heartless 
satirists, and the follies of poor little Mr. Parker 
filled us with wicked glee. 

I see him still, unconscious tiny clown, gath- 
ering up in a delicate grasp the tails of his black 
coat to show us how a lady curtseyed in the re- 
mote days of Queen Anne. And mincing across 
the polished floor, he would say, as he daintily 
picked his steps : “The lady enters the ball-room 
on the tip of her toes — so !” Picture, I pray you, 
the comic appearance of any woman who dared 
to enter a ball-room as Mr. Parker walked across 


Autobiography of a Child 

our dancing-hall! Society would stand still to 
gape. He minced to right, he minced to left, 
he minced in and out of the five positions, and 
then with eyes ecstatically closed, he would seize 
his violin, and play the homely air of “Nora 
Creina,” as he chasseed up and down the floor 
for our delectation, singing the while — 

“Bend and rise-a — Nora Creina, 

Rise on your tocs-a — Nora Creina, 

Cliassez to the right-a — Nora Creina, 

And then to the left-a — Nora Creina.” 

In his least inspired moments, he addressed us in 
the first position; but whenever he so'ared aloft 
on the wings of imagination, he stood in the 
glory of the fifth. In that position he never 
failed to recite to us the imposing tale of his 
successes in the “reception halls” of the Duchess 
of Leamington and the Marchioness of Stoke. 
Once he went so far as to exhibit to us a new 
dance he had composed expressly for his illus- 
trious friend the duchess. 

“My dears, that dance will be all the rage next 
spring in London, you will see.” 

He was quite aware that we never would see, 
having nothing on earth to do with the London 
season. But the assertion mystified us, and en- 
chanted him. 


162 


Autobiography of a Child 

“Thus my hand lightly reposes on the waist 
of her Grace, her fingers just touch my shoul- 
ders, and, one, two, three — boom !” he was glid- 
ing round the room, clasping lightly an imagin- 
ary duchess in his arms, in beatific unconscious- 
ness of the exquisite absurdity of his appearance 
and action, and we children followed his circum- 
volutions with glances magnified and bright- 
ened by mirth and wonderment. 

The irresistible Mr. Parker had a knavish 
trick of keeping us on our good behaviour by a 
delusive promise persistently unfulfilled. Every 
Tuesday, after saluting us in the fashion of the 
eighteenth century and demanding from us an 
immense simultaneous curtsey of Queen Anne, 
holding our skirts in an extravagant semicircle 
and trailing our little bent bodies backward and 
upward upon the most pointed of toes, he would 
rap the table with his bow, clear his throat, ad- 
just his white tie, straighten himself, and, with 
a hideous grin he doubtless deemed captivating, 
he would address us inclusively — 

“Young ladies, it is my intention to bring 
you a little confectionery next Tuesday; and 
now, if you please, attention ! and answer. What 
does practice do?’' 

In vain we shouted our customary response 
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Autobiography of a Child 

with more than our customary conviction; the 
confectionery was always for next Tuesday, and 
never, alas! for to-day. With longing eyes we 
watched the slightest movement of the master 
towards his pocket. He never produced any- 
thing but his handkerchief, and when he doubled 
in two to wish us “O reevoyer,’" he never omit- 
ted to say — 

“To-day I did not pass by the confectioner’s 
shop ; but it will certainly be for next Tuesday.” 

For a long time he took us in, as other so- 
called magicians have taken in simpletons as 
great as we. We believed he had a secret under- 
standing with the devil, for only to the power of 
evil could we attribute a quickness of appre- 
hension such as he boasted. He would stand 
with his back to us, playing away at his violin, 
while we chasseed and croised and heaven knows 
what else — 

“Now, my senses are so acutely alive to the 
impropriety of a false step, young ladies, that 
even with my back turned to you, I shall be able 
to tell which of you has erred without seeing 
her.” 

Sure enough he always pounced on the bung- 
ler, and never failed to switch round his bow 
violently and hit her toes. How was it done? 

164 


Autobiography of a Child 

Simply enough, one of us discovered quite by 
accident. There was a big mahogany press, as 
finely polished as a mirror, and in front of this 
the master planted himself. The rows of danc- 
ers, from crown to heel, were as clear to him as 
in a glass. By such simple means may a terrible 
reputation be acquired. For. months had Mr. 
Parker shabbily usurped the fame of a magician. 

In his quality of master he could permit him- 
self a brutality of candour not usually shown by 
his sex to us without the strictest limits of in- 
timacy. There was a big girl of sixteen, very 
stout, very tall, squarely built, with poultry-yard 
writ in broad letters over her whole dull and 
earthly form. An excellent creature, I have no 
doubt, though I knew nothing whatever about 
her, being half her age, which in school con- 
stitutes a difference of something approaching 
half a century. Her name was Janet Twycross, 
and she came from Shakespeare’s town. As be- 
fits a master of the graceful art, Mr. Parker’s 
preference was given to the slim and lovely 
nymph, and such a square emblem of the soil 
as Janet Twycross would naturally provoke his 
impatient contempt. Possibly she merited all 
the vicious rage he showered on her poor big 
feet, pathetically evident, emerging from skirts 
165 


Autobiography of a Child 

that just reached her ankles. But with my larger 
experience and knowledge of his sex, I am in- 
clined to doubt it, and attribute his vindictive- 
ness to a mere masculine hatred of ugliness in 
woman rather than to the teacher’s legitimate 
wrath. Hardly a Tuesday went by but he sent 
the inoffensive, great, meek creature into floods 
of tears ; and while she wept and sobbed, looking 
less lovely than ever in her sorrow, he would 
snarl and snicker at her, imitate her jeeringly, 
and cast obloquy on her unshapely feet. 

‘‘A ploughboy would be disgraced by such 
feet as Miss Twycross’s,” he would hiss across 
at her, and then rap them wickedly with his bow. 

The art of dancing, Mr. Parker proved to 
us, is insufficient to make a gentleman of its 
adept. Once his unsleeping fury against the 
unhappy girl carried him to singular lengths. 
He bade us all be seated, and then, with his 
customary inflated and foolish air began to ad- 
dress us upon the power of art. With art you 
can achieve anything, you can even lend grace 
to the ungraceful. 

‘T will now chose from your ranks the most 
awkward, the most pitiable and clumsy of her 
sex. The young lady unassisted cannot dance a 
single sitep; but such is my consummate skill. 


i66 


Autobiography of a Child 

SO finished is my art, that I shall actually suc- 
ceed in bestowing some of my own grace as a 
dancer upon her. Advance, Miss Twycross.” 

I leave you to picture the sensations of the 
unfortunate so addressed and so described. She 
advanced slowly, square and sodden, but with 
an unmistakable look of anguish in her poor 
harassed eyes, of a blue as dull and troubled as 
her complexion; and a certain twitching of her 
thin tight lips was eloquent enough of her un- 
provoked hurt. 

Mr. Parker, with his simpering disgusted air 
of ill-natured little dandy, flourished a perfumed 
handkerchief about her face, to sustain his af- 
fronted nerves, no doubt, placed an arm gin- 
gerly about the flat square waist, clasped her 
outer hand in evident revulsion, and began to 
scamper and drag her round the room in the 
steps of a wild schottische. Most of us tittered 
— could we be expected to measure the misery 
of the girl, while nature made us excruciatingly 
alive to the absurdity of her tormentor? 

As a girl myself I have often laughed in re- 
calling the incident; but I own that the brute 
should have been kicked out of the establish- 
ment for such an object-lesson in the art of com- 
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Autobiography of a Child 

municating grace. As for his boasted achieve- 
ment, even we babies could perfectly understand 
that there was not much too choose between his 
jerky waxwork steps and the heavy stamp of his 
partner. She at least was true to nature and 
moved as she looked, an honest cow-like crea- 
ture, whom you were at liberty not to admire, 
but who offered you no reason to despise her. 
While he, her vindictive enemy, mean unnatural 
little body, sheathing a base, affected, silly little 
soul, fiddling and scraping away his days which 
were neither dignified nor manly, he offered him- 
self to the unlimited contempt of even such 
microscopic humanity as ours. We felt he was 
not a man with the large capacity of manhood, 
but a disgraced and laughable thing, a puppet 
moving upon springs and speaking artificially, 
manufactured as dolls are, for the delectation 
of little folk. 

We enjoyed Mr. Parker, but we never regard- 
ed him as more human than the clown or the 
harlequin of the pantomime. We imitated him 
together; we played at him, as we played at 
soldiers or fairies or social entertainment. Had 
we learnt that he was dead or ill, or driven to the 
poorhouse, it would have been just as if we had 


i68 


Autobiography of a Child 

heard such news of harlequin, or heard that 
Peeping Tom had fallen from his window and 
smashed his head. Mr. Parker was not a person 
at the Ivies ; he was a capital joke. 


169 


Chapter XIX. 


EPISCOPAL PROTECTION. 

The succeeding years in Lysterby are obscured. 
Here and there I recall a vivid episode, an abid- 
ing impression. Papa came over with one of 
my elder sisters. They arrived at night, and 
I, half asleep, was dressed hurriedly and taken 
down to the parlour. A big warm wave of de- 
light overwhelmed me as my stepfather caught 
me in his arms and whisked me up above his fair 
head. It was heaven to meet his affectionate 
blue eyes dancing so blithely to the joy of my 
own. Seated upon his shoulder, I touched a 
mole on his broad forehead, and cried, as if I 
had made a discovery — 

“You’ve got the same little ball on your fore- 
head, papa, that you had when you used to come 
down to Kildare.’* 

Bidding me good-night, he promised to come 
for me early next day, and told me I should sleep 
in the Craven Arms, and spend two whole days 
driving about the country with him. How com- 
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Autobiography of a Child 

forting the well-filled table, the cold ham, the 
bacon and eggs at breakfast, the bread and mar- 
malade, all served on a spotless tablecloth, and 
outside the smell of the roses and honeysuckle, 
and the exciting rumble of flies up and down 
the narrow street! I was so happy that I quite 
forgot my woes, and did not remember to ccxm- 
plain of my enemies. There was so much to eat, 
to see, to think of, to feel, to say! I not only 
wanted to know all about everybody at home, 
but I wanted to see and understand all about 
me. 

In the Abbey we saw Vandyke’s melancholy 
Charles, and it was a rare satisfaction for me to 
be able to tell how he had been beheaded. At 
the great Castle we saw Queen Elizabeth’s bed 
with the jewel- wrought quilt, and my romantic 
elder sister, fresh from reading “The Last of the 
Barons,” passionately kissed the King-maker’s 
armour. She told us the thrilling tale as we sat 
in the famous cedar avenue, when the earl’s 
daughter, all summery in white muslin and Leg- 
horn hat, passed us with her governess, and al- 
though she was a fresh slip of a girl just like 
my sister, because of her name we felt that a 
living breath of history had brushed us. She 
was not for us an insignificant girl of our own 


171 


Autobiography of a Child 

century, but something belonging to the King- 
maker, a breathing memory of the Wars of the 
Roses, the sort of creature the dreadful Richard 
might have wooed in his hideous youth. 

And then at night, in the old inn, we dis- 
covered two big illustrated volumes about Jos- 
ephine and Napoleon. I had not got so far in 
history as Napoleon, and here was an unex- 
plored world, whose fairy was my voluble and 
imaginative sister. With a touch of her wand 
she unrolled before my enthralled vision scenes 
of the French Revolution and the passionate 
loves of Bonaparte and the young Viscountess 
de Beauharnais. I wish every child I know two 
such nights as I passed, listening to this evoca- 
tive creature revive so vividly one of the intens- 
est and most dramatic hours of history. Thanks 
to her eloquence, to her genius, Napoleon, vile 
monster, became one of my gods. I think the 
thrilling tale she read me was by Miss Muloch. 
Impossible now to recall the incidents that suf- 
ficed to turn succeeding weeks into an exquisite 
dream. Who, for instance, was the beauteous 
creature in amber and purple velvet, with glit- 
tering diamonds, that usurped such a fantastic 
place in the vague aspirations of those days? 
And the lovely Polish countess Napoleon loved? 


172 


Autobiography of a Child 

And those letters from Egypt to Josephine, and 
Josephine’s shawls and flowers, and the ghost- 
stories of Malmaison, and the last adieu the night 
before the divorce. Hard would it be to say 
whom I most loved and deeply pitied, the un- 
admirable Josephine or the admirable queen of 
Prussia. My sister read aloud, as we sat up in 
bed together, I holding the candle, and gazing 
in awe and delight, wet-eyed, at the coarse en- 
gravings. 

Other sisters came in quick succession, but 
they remained strangers to me. They fawned 
on Sister Esmeralda, whom I hated : they were 
older and wiser than I ; they aspired to the rib- 
bon of the Children of Mary, and walked sub- 
missively with the authorities of Church and 
State. They played 'T1 Baccio” on the piano, 
and a mysterious duet called the ^‘Duet in D.” 
The only sister I remember of those days as an 
individual was Pauline, who had opened to me 
a world of treasures. At school, she naturally 
forsook me for girls of her own age; but on 
play-days, when we were free to do as we liked 
all day, she sometimes condescended to recall 
my existence, and told me with an extraordinary 
vivacity of recital the stories of “East Lynne,” 


173 


Autobiography of a Child 

“The Black Dwarf,” “Rob Roy,” and “Kenil- 
worth.” 

But for the rest she was a great and glorious 
creature who dwelt aloft, and possessed the 
golden key of the chambers of fiction. My im- 
mediate friend was Polly Evans, whose mam- 
ma once took me to tea in an old farmhouse 
along the Kenilworth road. 

There were strawberries and cream on the 
table, and delicious little balls of butter in blue- 
and-white dishes, and radishes, which I had 
never before eaten; and the air was dense with 
the smell of the flowers on table, sideboard, 
mantelpiece, and brackets. Polly and I, with 
her brother Godfrey, played all the long after- 
noon in the hay-field, drunk with the odour, the 
sunny stillness, the hum of the bees — drunk, 
above all, with this transient bliss of freedom 
and high living. 

Another time Mrs. Evans took me with Polly 
and Godfrey to Kenilworth Castle, where we 
dined among the ruins on ham, cold chicken, 
fruit, and lemonade. Yet she herself is no re- 
membered personality: I cannot recall a single 
feature of hers, and even Polly herself is less 
clear in memory than Mary Jane of Kildare, 
than the abominable Frank. 


174 


Autobiography of a Child 

Years after, Polly and her brother visited Ire- 
land as tourists, and having all that time treas- 
ured my parents’ address, called to see me. But 
I was abroad, a hopeless wanderer. Godfrey, 
I learnt, was quite a fine young fellow, who 
shared his sister’s attachment to me. Polly was 
sprightly and pretty, it seems, engaged too. But 
I never saw them again. 

An eminent bishop came to confirm us, and we 
were taken down to town church, where, to our 
infinite amusement, we occupied several rows 
of benches opposite a boys’ school, also brought 
hither for the same ceremony, each with a white 
rosette in his button-hole. None of us took the 
rite very seriously. We found it droll to be 
tapped on the cheek by a white episcopal hand 
and told that we were soldiers, and we watched 
the boys to see if their bearing were more mar- 
tial than ours. They seemed equally preoc- 
cupied with us, and looked as if they felt them- 
selves fools, awkward and shamefaced. They 
stared hard at our noble youth, Frank, in his 
eternal skirts — his curls had recently been clip- 
ped — and nudged and giggled. Much of a sol- 
dier looked Frank ! Heaven help the religion of 
Christ or the Constitution if either reposed faith 
in his prowess! 


175 


Autobiography of a Child 

Whither has he drifted, and what has life made 
of the meanest little rascal I ever knew? Has he 
learnt to tell the truth at least? Has some pub- 
lic school licked him into shape, and kicked the 
cowardice and spitefulness out of him? When I 
became acquainted with Barnes Newcome after- 
wards, I always thought of that boy Frank. ‘‘Sis- 
ter So-and-so, that nasty Angela is teasing me.’’ 
“Mother This, I can’t eat my bread-and-milk ; 
that horrid Angela has put salt into it.” And 
then, when no one was looking, and a child 
weaker than himself was at hand, what sly 
pinches, and kicks, and vicious tugs at her hair. 
Noble youth, future pillar of the British empire, 
I picture you an admirable hypocrite and bully ! 

I wonder why the bishop singled me out of 
all that small crowd for a stupendous honour. 
He had asked my name, and after a luxurious 
lunch with a few privileged mothers in the con- 
vent, he requested somebody to fetch me. The 
nuns did not fail to impress the full measure of 
this honour upon me, and when I came into the 
refectory, where the bishop was enthroned like 
a prince, I caught a reassuring beam from my 
dear friend, Mother Aloysius! 

The bishop pushed back his chair and held out 
both arms to me. I was a singularly pretty child, 
176 


Autobiography of a Child 

I know. My enemy, Sister Esmeralda, had even 
said that I had the face of an angel with the 
heart of a fiend. A delicate, proud, and serious 
little visage, with the finish, the fairness, the 
transparency of a golden-haired doll, meant to 
take the prize in an exhibition. But this would 
hardly explain the extraordinary distinction con- 
ferred on me by a man who has passed into his- 
tory, — a. grave and noble nature, with as many 
cares as a Prime Minister, a man who saw men 
and women in daily battalions, and to whom a 
strange little girl of nine he had never spoken 
to, could scarcely seem a more serious creature 
in life than a rabbit or a squirrel. 

He had a kind and thoughtful face, deeply 
lined and striking. I liked his smile at once, 
and went up to him without any feeling of shy- 
ness. 

He lifted me on to his knee, kissed my fore- 
head, and looked steadily and long into my 
steady eyes. Then he kissed me again, and 
called for a big slice of plum-cake, which Mother 
Aloysius, smiling delightedly at me, was quick 
to hand him. He took it from the plate, and 
placed it in my willing grasp. 

‘‘A fine and most promising little face,” I 
distinctly heard him say to the superioress. ‘‘But 


177 


A.utobiography of a Child 

be careful of her. A difficult and dangerous 
temperament, all nerves and active brain, and 
a fearful suffering little heart within. Man- 
age her, manage her. I tell you there’s the stuff 
of a great saint or a great sinner here, if she 
should see twenty-one, which I doubt.” 

Alas! .1 have passed twenty-one years and 
years ago, with difficulty, it is true, with ever 
the haunting shadow of death about me, and 
time has revealed me neither the saint nor the 
sinner, just a creature of ordinary frailty and our 
common level of virtue. If I have not exactly 
gone to perdition — an uncheerful proceeding 
my sense of humour would always guard me 
from — I have not scaled the heights. I have 
lived my life, by no means as well as I had 
hoped in the days we are privileged to hope 
and to dream, not as loftily, neither with dis- 
tinction nor success; but I have not accom- 
plished any particular villainy, or scandal, or 
crime that would justify my claiming an import- 
ant place in the ranks of sinners. I have had a 
good deal more innocent fun, and known a great 
deal more suffering, than fall to the common 
lot ; and I have enjoyed the fun with all the in- 
tensity of the mercurial Irish temperament, and 
endured the other with what I think I may 
178 


Autobiography of a Child 

proudly call the courage of my race. I have not 
injured or cheated a human being, though I 
have been greatly injured and cheated by more 
than I could now enumerate. There ends my 
scaling of the hill of virtues. 

Of my sins it behoves me not to speak, lest 
I should fall into the grotesque and delightful 
attitude of the sailor I once heard in London 
make his public confession to a Salvation Army 
circle. 

‘‘My brothers, I am a miserable sinner. In 
Australia I murdered a man; I drank contin- 
ually, I thieved, I ran after harlots, and led the 
life of debauchery. Oh, my friends, pray for me, 
for now I am converted and know Jesus. I am 
one of the just, may I remain so. But wicked 
and de'bauched and drunken as I was, there 
were lots more out there much worse than I.’^ 
In summing up our errors and frailties, it is 
always a kindly comfort offered our conceit to 
think that there are on all sides of us “lots more 
much worse than we.’^ Unless our pride chooses 
to take refuge in the opposite reflection, so we 
prefer to glory in being much worse than others. 

And so ends my single interview with an emin- 
ent ecclesiatic. He kissed me repeatedly, and 


179 


Autobiography of a Child 

stroked my hair while I munched my plum-cake 
on his knee. He questioned me, and discov- 
ered my passionate interest in Napoleon and 
Josephine and the Queen of Prussia, the King- 
maker, and the children in the Tower. And 
then, having prophesied my early death and 
luminous or lurid career, he filled my two small 
hands with almond-drops and toffee, and sent 
me away, a being henceforth of something more 
than common clay. 

From that hour my position in Lysterby was 
improved. I was never even slapped again, 
though I had had the stupendous good luck to 
see, unseen myself, the lay-sister who had 
flogged me go into a cupboard on the staircase, 
whose door, with the key on the outside, opened 
outward, and crawling along on hands and 
knees, reached the door in time to lock her in. 
I w'as also known to have climbed fruit-trees, 
when I robbed enough unripe fruit to make all 
the little ones ill. Yet nobody beat me, and I 
was let off with a sharp admonishment. I went 
my unruly way, secretly protected by the bish- 
op’s admiration. 

If I did not amend, and loved none the more 
my tyrants, their rule being less drastic, I had 
i8o 


Autobiography of a Child 

less occasion to fly out at them. Besides, semi- 
starvation had subdued me for the while. I 
suffered continually from abscesses and earache, 
and spent most of my time in the infirmary, 
dreaming and reading. 


i8i 


chapter XX. 


HOME FOR THE HOLIDAYS. 

Home for the holidays! What a joyous sound 
the words have for little ears 1 Holidays — home ! 
Two iridiscent words of rainbow-promise, ex- 
pectation in all its warm witchery of dream and 
enchantment, of indolence and eager activity, of 
impulses unrestrained, and of constant caresses. 
For me, alas! how much less they meant than 
for happier children ; but even to me the change 
was delightful, and I welcomed the hopes it con- 
tained with all the lively emotions of imagina- 
tive childhood. First there was the excitement 
of the voyage, then the fresh acquaintance with 
the land I had left two years ago, my own quaint 
and melancholy land I was about to behold again 
through foreign glasses ; then the captivation of 
my importance in the family circle, the wonder- 
ful things to tell, the revelations, the surprises, 
embroidered fact so close upon the hidden heels 
of invention! 

My mother came to take me home. She 
182 


Autobiography of a Child 

Stayed at the Ivies. It was summer-time, and 
all the rose-bushes were blood-red with blossom, 
and one breathed the fragrance of roses as if 
one were living a Persian poem. Not a white 
rose anywhere, but red upon red, through every 
tone from crimson to pink. Is it an exaggera- 
tion of imagination, or were the Lysterby lanes 
and gardens rivers of red, like the torrent-beds 
of the Greek isles when the oleander is a-bloom ? 
For, looking back to the summers of Lysterby, 
I see nothing on earth but roses, multiplied like 
the daisies of the field, a whole county waving 
perfumed red in memory of the great historic 
house whose emblem in a memorable war was 
the red rose of Lysterby. 

Of my mother’s stay at the Ivies, though she 
stayed there several days, I remember little defi- 
nite but two characteristic scenes. Walking 
across the lawn toward where she stood in the 
sunshine talking to Sister Esmeralda, I see her 
still as vividly now as then. She made so superb 
a picture that even I, who saw her through a 
hostile and embittered glance, stopped and asked 
myself if that imperial creature really were my 
m.other. The word mother is so close, so famil- 
iar, so everyday an image, and this magnificent 
woman looked as remote as a queen of legend. 
183 


Autobiography of a Child 

Her very beauty was of a nature to inspire ter- 
ror, as if the mere dropping of her white gold- 
fringed lids meant the sentence of death to the 
beholder. My companions round about me 
were prone in abject admiration, and of their 
state I took note with some measure of pride. 

Not so had Polly Evans’s mother been regard- 
ed ; not so was even Lady Wilhelmina, the Cath- 
olic peeress who came to benediction on Sun- 
day, regarded, though she had the haughty up- 
per lip and inscrutable gaze of sensational fiction. 

How to paint her, as she stood thus valorously 
free to the raking sunbeams that showed out 
the mild white bloom and roseleaf pink of her 
long, full visage? She wore on her abundant 
fair hair a black lace bonnet, trimmed with 
mauve flowers and a white aigrette, and the 
long train of her white alpaca gown lay upon the 
grass like a queen’s robe. I remember my ad- 
miration of the thousand little flounces, black- 
edged, that ran in shimmering lines up to her 
rounded waist. She was in half mourning for 
my grandmother, whose existence I had for- 
gotten all about, and brave and becoming, it 
must be admitted, were those weeds of mitigated 
grief. As I approached, she turned her fine and 
finished visage, with the long delicate and 


184 


Autobiography of a Child 

cruel nostrils, and the thin delicate red lips, 
to me, and her cold blue glance, falling upon 
my anxious and distrustful face, turned my heart 
to stone. I felt as Amy Robsart, my favourite 
heroine, must have felt when she encountered 
the gaze of royal Elizabeth. Elizabeth, hand- 
some, tall, and stately, with long sloping shoul- 
ders and full bust, not the Elizabeth of history; 
an Empress Eugenie without her feminine charm 
and grace, of the most wonderful fairness I have 
ever seen, and also the most surprising harshness 
of expression. I have all my life been hearing 
of my mother’s beauty, and have heard that when 
the Empress Eugenie’s bust was exposed at the 
Dublin Exhibition, the general cry was that my 
mother had been the sculptor’s model, so singu- 
lar and striking was the resemblance between 
these two women of Scottish blood. But then 
and then only, in one brief flash, did I seize the 
insistent claim of that beauty always closed to 
my hostile glance. Then and then only was I 
compelled, by the sheer splendour of the vision, 
to own that the mother who did not love me 
was the handsomest creature I had ever beheld. 

The other episode connected with her visit 
that has stamped itself upon memory is typ- 
ical of her rare method of imparting knowledge 


Autobiography of a Child 

to the infant mind. We were driving in a fly 
through the rose-smelling country, and it trans- 
pired, as we approached a railway station, that 
we were going to visit Shakespeare’s grave. 
‘‘Who is Shakespeare ?” I flippantly asked, look- 
ing at my sister, who sat beside my mother. 

Pif-paf! a blow on the ear sent sparks flying 
before my eyes, and rolled my hat to the ground. 
Two years inhabiting a sacred county and not 
to have heard of the poet’s name! a child of 
hers, the most learned of women, so ignorant and 
so unlettered! Thus was I made acquainted 
with the name of Shakespeare, and with stinging 
cheek and humiliated and stiffened little heart, 
is it surprising that I remember nothing else 
of that visit to his tomb ? Indeed it was part of 
my pride to look at nothing, to note nothing, 
but walk about that day in full-eyed sullen 
silence. 

My mother had not seen me for two years. 
This was the measure of maternal tenderness 
she had treasured up for me in that interval, and 
so royally meted out to me. Other children 
are kissed and cried over after a week’s absence. 
I am stunned by an unmerited blow when I 
rashly open my lips after a two years’ separation. 
And yet I preserve my belief in maternal love 


i86 


Autobiography of a Child 

as a blessing that exists for others, born under 
a more fortunate star, though the bounty of 
nature did not reserve a stray beam to brighten 
the way for that miserable little waif I was those 
long, long years ago. 


187 


Chapter XXL 


OLD ACQUAINTANCE. 

The most vivid remembrance of my first return 
to Ireland is the sharp sensation of ugly sound 
conveyed in the flat Dublin drawl. I have never 
since been able to surmount this unjust antip- 
athy to the accent of my native town. The 
intolerable length of the syllables, the exag- 
gerated roundness of the vowel sounds, the 
weight and roll of the eternal r^s — it is all like 
the garlic of Provence, more seizing than cap- 
tivating. 

And then the squalor, the mysterious ugli- 
ness of the North Wall! The air of affronted 
leisure that greets you on all sides. A filthy 
porter slouches over to you, with an indulgent, 
quizzical look in his kindly eyes. “Is it a porther 
ye’ll be wanting?” he asks, in suppressed won- 
derment at any such unreasonable need on your 
part. When he has sufficiently recovered from 
the shock, he lounges in among the boxes, hero- 
ically resolved to make a joke of his martyrdom. 

i88 


Autobiography of a Child 

He meets your irritated glance with a reassur- 
ing smile, nods, and drawls out cheerily: ‘‘Aisy, 
now, aisy. Sure an’ ’twill be all the same in a 
hundred years.” When at last your trunks are 
discovered in the disorderly heap, he volunteers, 
with the same suggestion of indifferent indul- 
gence : suppose ’twill be a cab or a cyar you’ll 
be wanting next.” By implication you are made 
to understand that the cab or the cyar is an- 
other exorbitant demand on your part, and that 
properly speaking you should shoulder your 
trunk yourself and march off contentedly to your 
inn or lodging or palace. “If ye loike. I’ll lift 
it on to the cab for you,” he adds, good-natur- 
edly. 

There are travellers whom these odd ways of 
Erin amuse; others there are who are exasper- 
ated to the verge of insanity by them. But they 
amply explain the lamentable condition of the 
island and the imperturbable good-humour of 
the least troubled and least ambitious of races. 
The porter’s philosophy resumes the philosophy 
of the land : “Aisy, now, aisy. Sure an’ ’twill be 
all the same in a hundred years.” 

With patience and good-humour on your side, 
and much voluble sympathy and information 
on that of your driver, you are sure to arrive 
189 


Autobiography of a Child 

somewhere, even from such remote latitudes as 
that of the North Wall and the Pigeon-house. 
You are jerked over two lock-bridges, and you 
thank your stars with reason that the discoloured 
and malodorous waters of the Liffey have not 
closed over you and your luggage. The catas- 
trophe would find your driver phlegmatic and 
philosophic, with a twinkle in his eye above the 
infamous depths of mire that suffocated you, as- 
suring you that when a man is ass enough to 
travel he must take the consequences of his 
folly. For Erin and Iberia, moist shamrock and 
flaunting carnation, meet in their conviction that 
the sage sits at home and smokes his pipe or 
twangs his guitar in leisure while the fool 
alone courts the perils of foreign highways. 

As soon as the hall-door opened, and I stood 
with my foot upon the first step of the familiar 
stairs, a chorus of young voices shouted my 
name in glee. ^‘An — gel — a!” 

How flat and strange and inharmonious 
sounded that first greeting of my name in ears 
attuned to accents shriller and more thin! The 
English Angela was quick and clear; but the 
long-drawn Dublin Angela set all my teeth on 
an edge, and such was the shock that the ardour 
of my satisfaction in seeing them all again, and 


Autobiography of a Child 

of appearing in their midst as a travelled person- 
age, was damped. 

^'How odd you all talk,” I remember remark- 
ing at tea, and being promptly crushed: '‘It’s 
you with your horrid English accent that talks 
odd.” 

Still, in spite of this slight skirmish, they were 
glad enough to see me. The quaint little booby 
of Kildare, whom they had bullied to their lik- 
ing, had grown into a lean, delicate, and resolute 
fiend, prepared to meet every blow by a buffet, 
every injustice by passionate revolt. I no longer 
needed Mrs. Clement’s submissive protection. 
I had tasted the glory of independent fight, and 
henceforth my tormentors were entitled to some 
meed of pity, though justice bids me, in record- 
ing my iniquities, to remember that their mis- 
fortunes were merited and earned with exceed- 
ing rigour. 

The first thrill of home-coming, that inex- 
plicable vibration of memory’s chord, which so 
early marks the development of the creature, and 
signifies the sharp division of past and present, 
ran like a flame through all my body when the 
noise of Mrs. Clement’s big bunch of keys, rat- 
tling below stairs, reached me through the open 
drawing-room door. 

191 


Autobiography of a Child 

*^Mrs. Clement is down-stairs !” I shouted joy- 
ously, and instantly the band of blond-headed 
scamps carried me off in triumph. 

Into whose hands has that sombre town-house 
of my parents passed? Heaven grant the chil- 
dren that play there are happier than ever I was ; 
but if the old store-room, with the big linen- 
presses, and the long china-press with upper 
doors of wire-screen, the long table and square 
mahogany and leather armchairs and sofa, gives 
to the occupants to-day half the pleasure it 
always gave me, they are not to be pitied what- 
ever their fate. 

The wide window looked out upon a hideous 
little street, but in front there was a stone ter- 
race, with two huge eagles, where Mrs. Clement 
kept pots of plants and flowers that, alas ! never 
bloomed, watered she them never so sedulously ; 
and above the terraces, if you ignored the sordid 
street, the sunset traced all its fairest and rarest 
effects upon the broad arch of heaven that span- 
ned the street opening. Those Irish skies ! you 
must go to Italy and Greece to find hues as 
heavenly. How many a sorrow unsuspected, 
that filled me with such intensity of despair as 
only childhood can feel, has been smoothed by 
that mysterious slip of sky between two dull 


192 


Autobiography of a Child 

rows of houses, against which in the liquid sum- 
mer of blue dusk the eagles, with all the lovely 
significance of a romantic image, were sketched 
in sculptured stone. I dried my eyes to dream 
of lands where eagles flew as common as spar- 
rows. I cannot now tell why, but I remember 
well that I grew to associate that distant glimpse 
of heaven from the old store-room with the isle 
of Prospero and Miranda. And when I learnt 
the Sonnets — which I knew by heart, as well as 
'‘The Tempest” and “The Merchant of Venice” 
before the holidays were over — I always found 
some strange connection between the abortive, 
sickly cowslips and primroses Mrs. Clement 
cultivated on her terrace in wooden boxes and 
those magic lines — 

“From you have I been absent in the spring, 

When proud-pied April, dressed in all his trim, 
Hath put a spirit of youth in everything.” 

What can it be that poetry says to children, 
since they can neither understand the rhythm, 
nor metre, nor beauty, nor sentiment of it ? And 
the child who (as I was then) is susceptible to the 
charm of poetry that sweeps through the in- 
finite, weeps with delicious emotion without the 
ghost of an idea why. I was but a child of nine, 
when my sister in response to my prayer, with 


193 


Autobiography of a Child 

my cheek still stinging from that blow along 
the Warwick road, opened the fairyland of 
Shakespeare to me. With a rapture I would I 
now could feel, I thrilled to the glamour of the 
moonlight scene of the “Merchant.” We never 
went to bed without rehearsing it, each in turn 
being Jessica or Lorenzo. I only remember one 
other sensation as passionate and vivid and ab- 
sorbing, my first hearing of the Moonlight 
Sonata, also at an age when it was perfectly im- 
possible that I should understand more than a 
mouse or a linnet a particle of its beauty or 
meaning. Yet there they stand out in extraor- 
dinary relief from a confusion of childish im- 
pressions, two distinct moments of inexplicable 
ecstasy, the reveries of Lorenzo and Jessica and 
the impassioned utterance of the master’s soul 
in the divinest of sound played, possibly not 
well, by my eldest sister’s governess in a soft 
summer twilight so long ago. 

Meanwhile I have left Mrs. Clement, excited 
and pathetic, holding my thin little visage in the 
cup of her folded palms. She was just as faded 
and fair and melancholy as ever, and -the same 
young man’s head showed in the brooch frame 
on the unchanged black silk gown. She kissed 
me several times, and stroked my hair, and ex- 


194 


Autobiography of a Child 

pressed amazement at the change in me. And 
while she, dear kindly soul, was only thinking 
of me, there was I, volatile little rascal, looking 
around me, delighted to see again the beautiful 
big red-and-white cups, and smell the spices of 
the cupboard. Has tea, have bread-and-milk, 
ever tasted again as these modest luxuries tasted 
in those beautiful cups ? The very remembrance 
of them brings the water of envy to the mouth 
of age. I forget the miseries of childhood only 
to recall the pleasure I took in that warm and 
rich pottery, and the brilliant effect of bowls 
and plates and cups upon the morning and even- 
ing damask. 

And that first night at home, four little girls 
sleeping together in two large beds, three night- 
dressed forms perched on a single bed, while I, 
the stranger returned from abroad, mimicked 
Mr. Parker for their shrieking delight, and held 
my night-dress high up on either side to perform 
the famous curtsey of Queen Anne. And then a 
furious shout outside on the landing, and my 
mother’s voice — 

'What’s the meaning of that noise? Go to 
sleep instantly, or I’ll come in and whip you all 
round.” 

A sudden scamper of white-robed limbs, and 


195 


Autobiography of a Child 

in a twinkling four heads are hidden under the 
sheets. Silence down the corridors, silence 
throughout the high old house ; only the breath- 
ing of night, and four little heads are again 
bobbing over the pillows. 

“Oh, I say, Angela, we didn’t tell you, there’s 
a new baby up-stairs. Susanna ! Did you ever 
hear of such a name? Everybody has pretty 
names but us. Birdie was so jealous when it 
came, because nurse said her nose would be 
out of joint, that she tried to smash its head 
with a poker one day. She was caught in time.” 

And so there was. Another lamentable little 
girl born into this improvident dolorous vale of 
Irish misery. Elsewhere boys are born in plenty. 
In Ireland, — the very wretchedest land on earth 
for woman, the one spot of the globe where no 
provision is made for her, and where parents 
consider themselves as exempt of all duty, of 
tenderness, of justice in her regard, where her 
lot as daughter, wife, and old maid bears no 
resemblance to the ideal of civilisation, — a dozen 
girls are born for one boy. The parents moan, 
and being fatalists as well as Catholics, reflect 
that it is the will of God, as if they were not in 
the least responsible ; and while they assure you 
that they have not wherewith to fill an extra 


196 


Autobiography of a Child 

mouth, which is inevitably true, they continue 
to produce their twelve, fifteen, or twenty in- 
fants with alarming and incredible indifference. 
This is Irish virtue. The army of inefficient 
Irish governesses and starving illiterate Irish 
teachers cast upon the Continent, forces one to 
lament a virtue whose results are so heartless 
and so deplorable. If my most sympathetic and 
most satisfactory race were only a little less 
virtuous in its own restricted sense of the word, 
and a tiny bit more rational! And not content, 
alas ! with the iniquity of driving these poor 
maimed creatures upon foreign shores in the 
quest of daily bread, hopelessly ill-equipped for 
the task, without education, or knowledge of 
domestic or feminine lore, incapable of handling 
a needle or cooking an egg, without the most 
rudimentary instinct of order or personal tidi- 
ness, incompetent, and vague, and careless, — 
these same parents at home expect these martyrs 
abroad to replenish their coffers with miserably 
earned coin. I have never met an Irish gov- 
erness on the Continent who had a sou to spend 
on her private pleasures, for the simple reason 
that she sent every odd farthing home. ICs the 
iniquitous old story. Irishmen go to America, 
marry, and make their fortunes; but the land- 


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Autobiography of a Child 

lord and shopkeeper at home are paid by the 
savings of the peasant-girls, without a “Thank 
you’’ from their parents. Let Jack or Tom send 
them a five-pound note in the course of a pros- 
perous career, “Glory be to God, but ’tis the 
good son he is,” piously ejaculate the old folk. 
Let Bessy or Jane give them her heart’s blood, 
deny herself every pleasure, not only the lux- 
uries but the very necessaries of life, and the 
same old folk nod their sapient heads, — “ ’Tis 
but her duty, to be sure.” 

Needless to say, this inappropriate burst of 
indignation was not inspired in those days by the 
sight of my new little sister in her cradle, as 
white as milk, with eyes like big blue stars, the 
eyes of her Irish father, soft and luminous and 
gay. She dwelt on earth just eighteen months, 
and then took flight to some region where it is 
to be hoped she found a warmer nest than fate 
would have offered her here bdow. 

My grandmother was dead, but Dennis and 
Mary Ann still lived with my uncle Lionel. What 
a joy our meeting! So “thim English” hadn’t 
made mince-meat of me ! I was whole and sound, 
Mary Ann remarked, but mighty spare of 
flesh and colour. “Just a rag of a creature,” 
Dennis commented, as he lifted my arm. 

198 


Autobiography of a Child 

^‘Why didn’t ye write and tell us ye were hun- 
gry, alannah?” 

“I did so,” I promptly retorted; ^^but Sister 
Esmeralda rubbed it out, and put in something 
else which wasn’t a bit true.” 

; ‘Troth, and ’tis meself ’ud enjoy givin’ that 
wan a piece of me moind.” 

The whiff of the brogue was strong enough 
to waft you to the clouds. But how good to 
be with these two honest souls again! Uncle 
Lionel gave me a crown-piece, when he had 
tortured my cheek with his chaven chin, and 
called me a little renegade because of my English 
accent, and then I went out to the garden, neg- 
lected ever since the death of my grandfather. 

Where was Hamlet, and whither had van- 
ished Elsinore? Where was the youth with the 
future revolutionary name, who used to come 
bounding over the hedge, cheerily humming 
“Love among the Roses” ? There were no roses 
now, and the house next door was to let. 

After the trim gardens of England, this deso- 
late old slip of garden, where weeds and thick 
grasses grew along the uncared paths, seemed a 
cemetery of dead seasons. Fruit-trees that bore 
neither blossom nor fruit; flower-beds where 
never leaf nor flower now bloomed ; alleys where 


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Autobiography of a Child 

last year’s autumn leaves still lay; broken pots 
that used to make such a gay parterre of ger- 
aniums of every hue when my grandfather lived ; 
defoliaged rose-bushes, now mere summer urns 
of unfulfilled promise, and scarce a red bunch 
on the currant-boughs. And the pool, with 
the circle of watering-cans above, now rusty and 
untouched, where I used to watch for the first 
faint line of shadow cast by the gathering dusk, 
which stole across its clear face in keeping with 
the stealing flight of light above — how dead 
and sad all this seemed, despite its quaint fam- 
iliarity. I was but a child, and yet as I stood 
once more in that neglected garden, I had some 
premonition of the immitigable sadness of re- 
membrance, the feeling that there was already 
a past that had slipped through my fingers, as 
the waters run ceaselessly from the fountain of 
life to mingle with the still river of death. 


200 


Chapter XXII. 


A PRINCESS OF LEGEND. 

“Is childhood dead?” Lamb asks; “is there not 
in the best some of the child’s heart left, to 
respond to its earliest enchantments?” Can I 
now, without a responsive thrill, see myself flash 
into the unaltered dulness of that Kildare village, 
a little princess of legend, with the glory of for- 
eign travel about me, the overseas cut of frock 
and shoes, the haughty and condescending con- 
sciousness of superiority? 

They were all so visibly at my feet, so glad 
to worship and admire, so eager to praise, so 
beset with wonder. I was to spend a week in 
their midst, a delightful week, as long as a story, 
as brief as a play, a puff of happiness blown 
across the bleak wind of solitude, a prolonged 
and hilarious scamper through sensation as vivid 
and vital as morning light. 

Mary Jane was there, with the unchanged 
oiled black ringlets, and in my honour she wore 
them bound with a bright blue ribbon. Louie 


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Autobiography of a Child 

came out from town to behold me, and gazed in 
stupefied awe. I had been in a ship across the 
sea. I had traversed half of England in a rail- 
way-carriage. Had I seen an elephant? Mary 
Jane wanted to know if I had seen the Queen. 

No ; but I had seen a naked lady, with beauti- 
ful golden hair down her back, ride through the 
town of Lysterby on a white pony, while twelve 
lovely pages in silver and gold and satin rode 
before, and twelve lovely maidens with long vel- 
vet cloaks lined with white satin rode behind 
her. This sounded as grand as a royal proces- 
sion, and I glided ingeniously over the igno- 
miny of having been to England and not hav- 
ing seen the Queen. 

Mary Jane’s mamma gave me a bowl of milk 
and a plate of arrowroot biscuits, and as I de- 
voured them, with what a splendid air I recog- 
nised the old and faded views of New York! 
I scorned my past ignorance, and off-handedly 
mentioned that “You know, the sea isn’t a bit 
like the pond.” And then the search for a bril- 
liant and captivating comparison — arm extended 
to suggest immensity ; heaving wave, rolling 
ship. 

“Isn’t she wonderful?” they cried; “and the 
fine language of her!” 


202 


Autobiography of a Child 

From cottage to cottage, from shop to shop, 
I wandered, intoxicated by the incense of ad- 
miraition. I embroidered fact and invented fic- 
tion with the readiness of the fanciful traveller. 
Sister Esmeralda became an unimaginable fiend, 
who had persecuted me as if I had been the 
heroine of the fairy-tale I was acting, till the 
entire village was fit to rise and shout for her 
blood. 

“The likes of that did you ever hear T’ a gaunt 
peasant in corduroy would ask his neighbour in 
dismay. 

“Troth and ’tis thim English as is a quare lot. 
Beat a little lady as is fit to rule the lot of them, 
and lock her up in dungeons along with spirits 
and goblins, and starve the life and soul out of 
her! Sure ’tis worse they are than in the days 
of Cromwell.” 

Naturally, in the amazing record of my ex- 
periences, the hidden bones and marble hand 
of my old friend, the White Lady of the Ivies, 
played a prominent and shuddering part. 

Under the influence of such an audience I 
tasted the fascinating results of suffering. I 
was in that brief week repaid for all the previous 
slights of fortune. I reposed in the lap of adula- 
tion, and turned my woes into a dramatic enjoy- 


203 


Autobiography of a Child 

ment. I had suffered ; but the romantic activity 
of my imagination, with a natural mirthfulness 
of temperament, preserved me from the self-cen- 
tred and subjective misery of the visionary, and 
from the embittering anguish of rancour. Once 
I had excited the local mind against Sister Es- 
meralda and the wretched superioress of the 
ladies of Mercy, my anger against them van- 
ished, and they simply remained in memory as 
picturesque instruments of misfortune. But for 
the moment I was too full of the joy of living 
for anything like morbid self-pity. I preferred 
to loll on the grass beside Bessy the applewo- 
man, and treat all the children of the green to her 
darling trays of apples with uncle Lionel’s bright 
crown-piece. Bessy never tired of assuring me 
that I was a wonderful creature, which I fully 
believed, and Louie made frequent mention of 
his thirst to be old enough to marry me. It 
soothed him to hear that he was much nicer 
than Frank, the horrid Lysterby boy. Louie 
had not made his first confession, and he was 
thrillingly and fearfully interested in the tale 
of mine. 

“You know,” I dolefully remarked, “the priest 
won’t let you confess any of the nice interest- 
ing-looking sins, with the lovely big names, like 


204 


Autobiography of a Child 

a-dul-tery and for-ni-fi-ca-tion and de-fraud-ing. 
He makes you tell awful little sins, like talking 
in class and answering a nun, and all that sort of 
thing.” 

^'Oh, but I say,” shouted Louie, wagging a 
remonstrative head, ^^the priest can’t prevent you 
from saying you committed adultery.” 

“Yes, but he says you didn’t; and then it 
seems you’re telling a lie to the Holy Ghost, 
and you may be struck dead in the confessional- 
box.” 

This Louie regarded as an excessive risk to 
run for the simple pleasure of confessing a nice 
big sin. He thought the matter over in bed 
that night, and communicated to me next morn- 
ing his intention to confess to having stolen two 
marbles from Johnnie Magrath, and having 
licked Tim Martin. 

“You know, Angy, I reailly did lick him, he’s 
such an awful beast, and made his nose bleed 
rivers, with a black dab under his eyes as big 
as my fist ; and here are the two marbles I stole.” 

He went back to town that afternoon, with 
his little gray eyes moist over the brimming 
smiles of his lively comic mouth. His was a 
hilarious depression, a rowdy melancholy, em- 
blematic of the destiny in store for him. He 


205 


Autobiography of a Child 

grimaced wonderfully, with screwed-up eye- 
lids and twisted and bunched-out lips, and kept 
on muttering all the time we walked together to 
the coach-house where the mail-car started 
from: “It’s an awful shame, so it is. A fellow 
can’t do what he likes, but there’s always some- 
body bothering him and ordering him about.” 

Dear, honest, little playmate! That was the 
last, last glimpse I had of him. We exchanged 
our last kiss at the top of the village street, and 
I wildly waved my handkerchief until a deep 
bend of the long white Kildare road hid the car, 
as it seemed to roll off the flat landscape. 


206 


Chapter XXIIL 

MY FIRST TASTE OF FREEDOM. 

My parents had taken a house at Dalkey, with 
a garden a dream of delights, that ran by shad- 
owy slopes and bosky alleys down to the grey 
rocks where the sea seemed to become our very 
own, as it rolled over the rocks, and made, from 
time to time, when the tide ran high, little pools 
along the sanded fringes of the garden. The 
house was large and rambling, and of a night 
when the waves roared and the artillery of the 
heavens shook at the foundations of earth, it 
afforded us enormous gratifications of every 
kind. We were fascinated by terror, and shud- 
dered in silence during the long nights when 
our parents were kept in town by a theatre, a 
race, a party. Then we were left in the charge 
of our eldest sister, a young person of a senti- 
mental and despotic turn of mind. She ruled us 
with a rod of iron, then invited us to weep with 
her over the poems of Adelaide Ann Procter. 
And while she read to us in a tremor of eager 


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Autobiography of a Child 

sensibilities the legend of Provence, she ruth- 
lessly confiscated ^Waverley,” “Kenilworth, 
“Rob Roy,’’ which I kept under my pillow, and 
read aloud at night to my younger sisters. Nov- 
els she held to be the kernel of every iniquity 
under the sun, but Longfellow and Adelaide 
Ann Procter were the sole ennobling influences 
of life. She was sustained in this crooked con- 
viction by a pensive little stitcher, who used 
to come and sew and mend for us all several 
hours a-week, and could recite in their entirety 
“Evangeline” and the “Golden Legend.” 

A quaint and original figure this white-haired, 
sad-eyed little stitcher. She had had her ro- 
mance, stranger than Evangeline’s. Her lover 
had gone to America, and had fought in the 
Federal war. With a few savings, she followed 
him across the Atlantic, and sought him out in 
State after State, walking several leagues a-day, 
with lifts here and there in waggons, subsisting 
for months on a daily crust and a rocct or two, to 
end her dolorous peregrinations in a hospital 
with her dying lover’s head upon her faithful 
breast. She returned to Ireland the heroine of 
a real novel, with black hair bleached and eyes 
dim from weeping. She had won the right to 
be cheerless, and stand with flowing eyes “on 


208 


Autobiography of a Child 

the bridge at midnight/' and tell us “in mourn- 
ful numbers life is but an empty dream.” 

We were a wild lot, no doubt, and worked 
wonders in villainy and mischief. Even our sis- 
ter’s sentimentality at times succumbed to our 
monstrous spirits; and she forgot Longfellow 
and Miss Procter, to drop into Irish farce. All 
the houses round about us were filled with boys 
and girls of all ages up to sixteen. We needed 
no introduction to form a general family of some 
thirty or forty vagrants and imps, of both sexes. 

The head of the troop was a red-headed youth, 
destined to adorn the medical profession, and 
a pale proud-looking boy of fourteen, my first 
love, Arthur by name, of an exalted family, and 
now, I believe, a distinguished colonel. When 
we joined the boys on the cricket-field, I always 
picked up his balls and handed them to him 
reverentially, and my reward was to be told in 
an offhand way that “I was a nice little thing.” 
To me he was Quentin Durward, Waverley, 
with a dash of Leicester and Prince Ferdinand. 
He certainly was quite as haughty-looking and 
distinguished as any of these decorative heroes. 
His father, an amiable, high-mannered old lord, 
sometimes treated us to fireworks ; and then his 
sisters, prouder than ever Cinderella’s could 


209 


Autobiography of a Child 

have been, would come out and smile down 
benevolently upon us all, with the air of court- 
ladies distributing prizes at a village festival. 
Arthur himself was a very simple boy, extremely 
flattered by my mute adoration, which he 
encouraged by all sorts of little airs and 
manoeuvres. 

It was the red-headed leader who invented the 
most delightful entertainment in the world. He 
formed us into a band of beggars. He played 
a banjo and sang nigger songs, and Arthur, 
in shirt-sleeves, with a rakish cap rowdily posed 
on his aristocratic flaxen head, went round with 
a hat to gather coin. We went from house to 
house, an excited troop of young rascals, sang 
and danced and begged and shouted in each 
garden until the grown-up people appeared and 
flung a sixpence, sometimes even a shilling, into 
Arthur’s hat. The old lord occasionally rose to 
half-a-crown. The parents enjoyed the fun as 
much as we did, and never pretended to recog- 
nise us. 

What tales we invented 1 What lies we told ! 
One pretty little girl, with brown ringlets round 
the rosiest of faces, won a half-sovereign from 
my stepfather, who was smoking on the lawn 
when the band invaded his solitude, by assuring 


210 


Autobiography of a Child 

his honour that she was ‘^the mother of four- 
teen children, with their bed-clothes on her 
back.” When she flung the sparkling piece into 
Arthur’s hat, he shouted “Gold!” and a frantic 
cheer went up from the band. We rushed off 
in a joyous body next day to Killiney Hill, and 
had a feast of lemonade and oranges, and toffee 
and cake. The red-haired chief paid the bill with 
a flourish, and if there was any change he kept it. 

Each parent took his turn in providing the 
company with an official feast. The old lord 
monopolised the fireworks. My stepfather in- 
stituted races. A wealthy barrister, our neigh- 
bour, inveigled a circus for our delectation ; and 
seven delightful old maids, who lived in a kind 
of castle of their own, outdid all the fathers roy- 
ally by a regatta of our own. All the boatmen 
of Dalkey were hired, and each boat ran up a 
sail. Mighty powers ! what a day that was. Were 
ever youngsters so gratified, so excited, so con- 
scious of being a little community apart, with 
the sea and the land for its entertainment? 

And there was an amiable old judge, who 
offered us the freedom of his big orchard, where 
the apples grew in quantities, and we climbed 
the trees like squirrels, and devoured fruit with- 
out fear or restraint. 


21 1 


Chapter XXIV. 


MY ELDEST SISTER. 

My eldest sister was only fourteen, but she was 
already, had ever been, a sage and a saint. At 
the age of eight she had put her hand into a 
blazing fire in order to die the death of a Chris- 
tian martyr. She shrieked dismally for several 
hours afterwards. Another time, staying with 
relatives in the country, she knelt in the gloam- 
ing in a big barn, praying with fervently closed 
eyes, in the hopes of being devoured by lions. 
She heard the distant growlings of an angry 
mastiff, and thought her prayer was granted, 
and that this was the ravening lion about to make 
a meal of her. She fell down in a fit of con- 
vulsions, and had to be nursed by several doc- 
tors. 

When she came back to consciousness, with 
her hair shorn and wan little hands upon the 
coverlet, she recognised our tender mother 
seated beside her bed, and contentedly shorten- 
ing her last new frock for my second sister. She 


212 


Autobiography of a Child 

offered up the mortification for her sins, and in- 
stantly said a prayer to her patron saint, Agnes. 
At dinner she never ate pudding or pie, not 
even damson-pie, for which I in those gluttonous 
days would have sold, not only my own soul, but 
hers as well ; but after dinner she invariably car- 
ried her share of these luxurious edibles to the 
nearest poor person. 

She visited the poor continually, always pro- 
vided with tea and sugar and such things; and 
Pauline, who accompanied her on these mis- 
sions of mercy, assured me that she often saw 
the pet cases of misery dash under the bed ex- 
cellent dishes of bacon and eggs and bottles 
of Guinness’ stout, while the traditional invalid 
would jump into bed, gather the clothes about 
her, and begin to whine, “Sure, your little lady- 
ship, ’tis our lonesome selves as hasn’t had bit 
or sup since last we saw your purty face.” 

My eldest sister was a bewitching beauty. She 
had large dusky blue eyes in constant commun- 
ion with the heavenly spheres. She had ruddy 
golden hair that shown adown her back like 
pounded guineas, and her complexion was a 
thing to gape at. Indeed we had all inherited 
from our mother wonderful golden locks and 
dazzling complexions. 


213 


Autobiography of a Child 

This sentimental and saintly creature wroug*ht 
the utmost havoc around her, and went dreamily 
through life unconscious or sublimely indiffer- 
ent, with her gaze of impassioned sadness fixed 
upon her heavenly home. Youths went down 
before her like ninepins, and trembled when 
they addressed her. One lad of sixteen rode 
past the door with a crimson cravat, which he 
fondly hoped to be becoming, and the moody 
intensity of expression that betokens a broken 
heart. She minded him not. She was reading 
“Fabiola” for the hundredth time in the front 
garden. The gate was open. In his amorous 
distraction the youth forgot the proprieties, and 
rode through the gate in lordly style. The door 
likewise was open, and the pony gallantly gal- 
loped into the hall. 

My sister’s dismay was nothing to the youth’s. 
He stammered and stuttered and went so red 
that the wonder was he ever grew pale again. 
But we were used to these commotions aroused 
by our young Saint Agnes in the bosom of ex- 
citable youth. It did not hurt her, and it did 
not harm them. With gracious gravity she 
escorted the poor lad to the gate; but we who 
knew her knew that she was stifling with sup- 
pressed laughter. For my eldest sister had a 


214 


Autobiography of a Child 

pretty humour, even an irony of her own, and 
gaiety, as will be seen, was not contra:band in 
her religion. 

She constituted herself our veritable mother 
in that old rambling house of Dalkey. She 
ruled us like an autocrat, and punished us with 
a lamentable severity. To teach us self-control 
and fearlessness, she insisted that the smallest 
baby should be taken in her night-dress, half 
asleep, and flung into the wild Irish sea that 
roared at the foot of the garden. No mercy was 
shown a recalcitrant babe. Howl she never so 
dolorously, she was plunged in head-foremost, 
sputtering salt through her rebellious lips. 

At night, when our parents stayed in town, 
she gathered us together in the long low draw- 
ing-room, and insisted that we should examine 
our consciences, meditate, and say the Rosary 
aloud to keep away robbers and ghosts. All the 
boys got to know of this edifying practice, and 
outside the window a crowd of arch-villains 
would gather, and shout the responses derisively. 
We could hear Arthur’s high-bred tones sing 
out "‘Holy Mary, Mother of God,” above the 
deep bass notes of the red-headed chief. Arthur’s 
brother, an elegant guardsman, staying with the 
old lord for a couple of weeks, often condescend- 


215 


Autobiography of a Child 

ed to join the band of reprobates; and once I 
peeped out through the big chinks of the shut- 
ter, and saw the man of fashion, with the hall- 
light directly upon his lean and bronzed visage, 
eyes devoutly lifted to heaven in m.imicry of my 
eldest sister’s ecstatic gaze, and hands folded 
like those of a stained-glass picture : “Holy 
Mary ! pray for me, a miserable sinner. Blessed 
St. Agnes, help, oh help to convert me!” 

Even the devotion of my eldest sister was 
unsettled, and we could see her mobile lips 
twitch. It sufficed to reveal to us that the 
autocrat was off guard, and we lay about the 
floor, and shrieked with delight. 

Whenever he met my eldest sister upon the 
roads or rocks, the elegant guardsman raised 
his hat with the air of a prince, and never a hint 
about him of nocturnal iniquities. 

But austere as she was in all things pertain- 
ing to discipline and religion, she allowed us 
unbounded freedom out-of-doors. Some notion 
of our use of that liberty may be seized from 
the following ejaculations of an elderly bachelor, 
a political friend, who came to visit my step- 
father, and was confronted with this young saint 
of the golden locks, the established mistress of 
a large household. 


216 


Autobiography of a Child 

The elderly gentleman, looking out of the win- 
dow in front, perceived two little boots dang- 
ling from the branch of a high tree, almost 
against the heaven. 

Who’s up that tall tree?” asked the elderly 
gentleman. 

*^Oh, that’s Angela. She always reads up 
there.” 

‘‘Bless my soul!” exclaimed the elderly gen- 
tleman. 

After further conversation, he walked down 
the room to examine the view from the back. 
In gazing across the sea, seemingly near Howth, 
he detected a rock point surrounded with heavy 
waves, and two little specks upon this rock. 

“It looks as if there were some creatures in 
danger of being drowned,” remarked the elderly 
gentleman. 

“Oh, not at all. That’s Pauline’s rock. She 
and Birdie always go out when the tide is out, 
and spend the whole day wading there, and they 
come back when the tide runs out again.” 

“My God!” cried the elderly gentleman. 

Looking later up to the stable roof, he saw 
three little golden heads bent over cards. 

“What’s that?” he blankly asked. 

217 


Autobiography of a Child 

“Those are the three youngest, playing beg- 
gar-my-neighbour on the roof.” 

“What extraordinary children!” muttered the 
elderly gentleman. 

She devised a notable and original punishment 
for me whenever I flew into one of my diabolical 
rages. She would order Miss Kitty, the senti- 
mental little stitcher, to hold my feet, a servant 
to hold my head, and while I lay thus on the 
ground in durance vile, she would piously be- 
sprinkle me with holy water, and audibly beseech 
the Lord and my guardian angel to deliver me 
of the devil. It would be difficult for me to con- 
ceive an operation more suitable as entertain- 
ment of the devil than my sister’s pious and 
fiendish method of obtaining his dismissal. The 
first thing I inevitably did, when liberated, was 
to go into the yard, and pump all the holy water 
off my wicked person. Then, dripping like a 
Newfoundland, I would return to the house and 
decline to change my dress or shoes, in the 
vociferated hope of immediate death from con- 
sumption. 


218 


Chapter XXV. 


OUR BALL. 

All the children and young folk round about 
us had parents who, if they went into town of a 
morning, were safe to return at night. Most 
of them had mothers and aunts who lived at 
Dalkey all the summer. Only we were happy 
enough to be so neglected by indifferent parents 
as to possess a large house at our exclusive dis- 
position four or five entire days and nights of 
the week. Picture our rare and wild abuse of 
that freedom, and imagine the envy it inspired in 
the bosoms of other children, of natures as in- 
dependent as ours! 

say,” proposed the red-headed chief, ‘Vhat 
a capital idea if we had a ball in your house some 
evening when theyVe away.” 

Between my eldest sister and me were two 
little maids, less of the rascal and less of the 
saint than either of us. Pauline, the teller of 
wonderful tales at Lysterby, seized upon the no- 
tion with avidity. A ball! our own ball, given 


Autobiography of a Child 

by ourselves, and all the vagrant band between 
the dances refreshed by our ingenious efforts 
and exploits! It was a grand idea. How we 
clapped our hands, danced, and stamped our 
feet in the exuberance of content. 

At first Saint Agnes demurred. She, after 
all, was the head of the house by deputy. Not 
only was she responsible for our immortal souls, 
but for our fragile bodies; above all, was she 
responsible for the state of the larder. It was 
she who told the servant what to order at the 
general grocer; she who drew attention to the 
condition of the cellar, in provision for the horde 
of Sunday visitors, and the interminable file of 
eager friends who made a point of inquring 
after the health of my parents and their progeny 
on band nights. 

You never understand how extremely popular 
you are until you are in a position to entertain 
at a pleasant seaside resort, within easy distance 
of the metropolis, where a fashionable gather- 
ing meets twice a-week to listen to the evening 
band, and where there are regattas. The most 
distant acquaintance suddenly remembers that 
he is your dearest friend. Troops invade your 
garden ; your drawing-room is never empty. 
Shoals devour the refreshments of your dining- 


?20 


Autobiography of a Child 

room. At ten o^clock, when you are on the 
point of barricading your too hospitable doors, 
men arrive cheerily to bid you the time of day, 
and claim a whisky-and-soda. I speak of Dub- 
lin, naturally, where, as a rule, we begin our 
afternoon calls at midnight, and where the early 
awakened lark is safe to find us snoring. In- 
habit that same seaside place in winter, and even 
your dearest friend will forget to remember -that 
he knows you. Irish hospitality is justly famous. 
There is nothing to match it on the face of the 
earth. But Irish abuse of hospitality is, perhaps, 
insufficiently recorded, and there is nothing more 
speedily forgotten than the unlimited favours 
of “open house.^’ 

My parents kept “open house’^ with a ven- 
geance, which is the reason to-day that none of 
us possess the needful sixpence to jingle on the 
traditional tombstone. It was the reason also 
that, when our ball came off, we children were in 
a position to offer our thirty or forty miniature 
guests flowing bowls of innocuous lemonade by 
the dozens, ham-sandwiches, boxes of Huntley & 
Palmer's biscuits, baskets of apples purchased by 
the hundred by my stepfather from his friend 
the judge, whose orchards we daily pillaged. 
There was also claret and soda-water, and even 


221 


Autobiography of a Child 

genial port and sherry, for that portion of the 
community we regarded as ^‘the grown-up,” — 
Arthur, the red-headed boy. Saint Agnes, Paul- 
ine, and a few others of both sexes. 

We discovered that my parents designed to 
sit out a play on a certain evening, which meant 
that they would never give themselves the 
trouble to catch the last train, and would sleep 
in town. Invitations were instantly despatched. 
Saint Agnes giving her consent reluctantly, but 
young enough to enjoy the prospect of the es- 
capade. The ball was to open as soon as possible 
after the seven o^clock tea, for at Dalkey, in 
those days, all the children dined at two o’clock 
and sat down at seven to a meal of tea and 
bread-and-butter, with barmbrack and buttered 
toast on high holidays. 

By eight o’clock the long drawing-room was 
full. We lit the clusters of tapers round the 
walls, which were reserved for the pleasures of 
our elders. The gas flared in every jet of the 
big chandelier. You might have fancied we 
were celebrating a Royal birthday, such was the 
brilliancy of our illuminated ball-room. Arthur 
had brought down, before tea, bunches of flow- 
ers from his father’s hothouse, and Saint Agnes 


zzz 


Autobiography of a Child 

was ever a veritable witch in the arrangement 
of flowers. 

The red-haired chief, as master of the cere- 
monies, wore a huge peony in his buttonhole, 
and with what gusto he marshalled us about, 
told off couples, and shouted “Lancers now,’’ 
or “Look out now, the Caledonian Quadrille.” 
Three quaint little girls had been allowed to 
come with their governess, who entered heartily 
into the spirit of the thing, and never left the 
piano. Quadrille after polka, waltz after schot- 
tische, “Sir Roger de Coverley,” mazurka, and 
gallop. And, between the dances, what riotous 
fun, when we cast ourselves upon the refresh- 
ments, and noisy boys risked death and assassi- 
nation as they opened lemonade and soda-water 
bottles with a splendid flourish! Our elders 
might drink themselves to frenzy on whisky and 
yet remain more sober than we were as we cap- 
ered and laughed and quaffed big draughts of 
harmless fluid. And the sandwiches we ate, the 
biscuits and apples we devoured, the bread-and- 
butter we munched, and flick, flack! there was 
Miss Montgomery at the piano, and dozens of 
little feet were again twinkling about the floor. 

I, proud being, danced twice with Arthur. We 
floundered in amazing fashion through a set of 


223 


Autobiography of a Child 

Lancers, the master ot ceremonies shouting the 
while indignantly at our heels. And later he 
invited me to go through some mysterious meas- 
ure he called a gallop, which consisted in a wild 
charge for the other end of the room, helter- 
skelter, couples knocking each other down de- 
lightedly, rolling over each other, and picking 
one another up in the best of tempers. 

And then, as we mopped our faces, and drank 
lemonade, somebody proposed that I should give 
an imitation of Mr. Parker. Arthur and I were 
the only travelled personages of the assembly. 
He had been to Eton and I had been to Lyster- 
by, and it was his slightly sarcastic voice that 
determined me. ^^Oh, I say, by all means. I 
hear he was a capital fellow that dancing-master 
of yours, and you do him to a T.” 

To prove that I did, I began the chasse-croise, 
to the tune of an imaginary violin, chanting 
Nora Creina, amid shrieks of approbation. How 
often since have my friends lamented my missed 
vocation! On the stage, whether actress or 
dancer, my fortune would long ago have been 
made, and as an acrobat I should have won 
glory in my teens. But old-fashioned parents 
never think of these things. If you are a girl, 
and fortune forsakes the domestic hearth, they 


224 


Autobiography of a Child 

tell you to go and be a governess, and bless your 
stars that, thanks to their good sense, you are 
enabled to earn a miserable crust in the path of 
respectability. When they find a child with ex- 
traordinary mimic capacities, an abnormal physi- 
cal suppleness, and a passion for the ballet, it 
does not occur to them that it would be wiser 
and more humane to seek to turn these advan- 
tages to some account, instead of condemning 
the litttle wretch to future misery and self-efface- 
ment as a governess. 

Pauline, who knew every moment of the fa- 
mous Mr. Parker by heart, wandered out into 
the front garden with a lad of her own age to 
look at the stars and talk of their ideal. It was 
a few minutes after the hourly train from Dub- 
lin stopped at Dalkey, and as they sat on the 
wall discussing their favourite book of the hour, 
Manzoni’s ‘‘Betrothed,’^ they saw a large and 
lofty figure steadily approach the gate. Good 
heavens! It was my mother. Pauline was a 
creature of resource, and she had some under- 
standing of that formidable person. 

^'Quick, quick, Eddie,'’ she whispered. '^Run 
in and tell Agnes to get them all out by the 
pantry window, which shows into the laneway. 


225 


Autobiography of a Child 

I’ll keep mamma outside talking about the 
stars.” 

Effectively, when my mother opened the gate, 
she encountered the solemn sentimental regard 
of a student of the stars. Nothing enchanted 
my mother more than an unexpected revelation 
of intelligence in one of her children. She was 
a woman of colossal intelligence, of wide knowl- 
edge, a brilliant talker, and at all times, what- 
ever her temper, you could put her instantly into 
good-humour, and wean her thoughts from the 
irritating themes of daily life, by addressing 
yourself to her intellect, and speaking of remote 
subjects like the constellations. South Africa, the 
Federal war, Belgian farming, or the German 
Empire. She knew everything, was interested 
in everything, had read everything, could talk 
like a specialist on any given subject, except 
mathematics and metaphysics, which she pro- 
fessed to hold in contempt. Another mother 
would have been staggered to find a girl of 
thirteen alone beneath the new-lit stars ; but my 
mother found nothing at all odd in being begged 
to deliver a lecture on astronomy at that hour, 
and fell into the trap with ingenuous fervour. 

And now I beseech you to conceive the scene 
inside. Ten minutes to clear the house of some 


226 


Autobiography of a Child 

thirty excited children, obliged to make a pre- 
cipitous exit through a narrow pantry window, 
stifling with hysterical laughter, and in danger 
of breaking their limbs upon the hard ground 
as they dropped into the lane that ran alongside 
the garden into the highroad. Ten minutes to 
clear the drawing-room of empty bottles and 
glasses and plates, and put the chairs and tables 
and couches into order. Ten minutes for us to 
scamper up-stairs, and get into our night-gear 
in the dark. Good Lord ! what fun ! One would 
willingly endure again the thrashing for those 
ten brave minutes of fire and fury. 

“It was grand !” said Arthur next day to Paul- 
ine, after he had tried in vain to look woe-begone 
over our castigation. 

Only the body of the red-headed chief rebelled 
against the limited space of the pantry window. 
What puffing and blowing and pushing to get 
his fat carcass through! “Steady!’’ shouted the 
servant, Bridget, a big-boned country girl ; and 
with a bound she ran head-foremost like a charg- 
ing bull, who meditates the destruction of his 
enemy. A crash outside, and we thrust anxious 
heads out of the window to ascertain if the un- 
fortunate youth lay in pieces upon the ground. 


227 


Autobiography of a Child 

But no; with smothered laughter he was tear- 
ing down the lane for dear life. 

With the last evidences of our feast effaced 
from view, we little ones trod on each other’s 
heels in our flight up-stairs, and staid Agnes 
went outside, by the way, to induce her moon- 
ing sister to go to bed. She simulated the nec- 
essary surprise and delight on beholding my 
mother, and after a few more words upon the 
heavenly spheres, the three entered the house, 
now cast, as Agnes fondly believed, into com- 
plete darkness. 

My mother carelessly explaining why she had 
decided at the last minute not to sleep in town, 
turned the handle of the drawing-room door. 
The tapers, forgotten in the fray, blazed away 
in all their fatal admission, though the gas of 
the chandelier had been duly extinguished. The 
result was that soon the heavenly spheres were 
round about us instead of on high. Agnes and 
Pauline rapidly were made to see stars elsewhere 
than in the sky. When they lay prone and pros- 
trate, not sure that their members were whole, 
up offended majesty came to us, shivering in 
our night-dresses. What did it all mean? she 
wanted to know. Empty bottles heaped up in 
the pantry corner, a ham vanished, tin boxes 


228 


Autobiography of a Child 

empty of their layers of biscuits, knives, plates, 
glasses, in tell-tale disarray, a broken pane in 
the pantry window. 

We had had our fun, and now came the bad 
quarter of the hour, when we were expected to 
pay the bill in beaten flesh. How our ears 
tingled, our cheeks pained, our heads ached, and 
our arms smarted! You see it was a very long 
account, and it took a good deal of blows to 
make it up. But even the most infuriated cred- 
itor is appeased in the long-run, when the gath- 
ering in of his dues implies the excessive expen- 
diture of nerve and muscle as such a scene as 
that of our castigation. The strongest woman 
cannot beat a half-dozen of children throughout 
an entire night, and my mother retired, pleased 
to regard her life in danger by a consequent 
fit of nervous exhaustion and blood to the head. 


229 


Chapter XXVI. 


THE SHADOWS. 

All this hilarity does not imply the total ab- 
sence of sadness in those bright days. I had 
lived and suffered too long in solitude not to 
have reserved a private corner for unuttered 
griefs, into which no regard of sister or stranger 
could ever penetrate. It is extraordinary the art 
with which a circle of children can make one 
chosen by mutual consent feel in all things, at 
every moment of the day, an intruder. The two 
elder than I were sworn friends, the three 
younger likewise; both groups united as allies. 
I stood between them, an outsider. I shared 
their games, it is true, as I shared their meals ; 
but when they had any secrets to impart, I was 
left out in the cold. I daresay now, on looking 
back, that had my sullen pride permitted a frank 
and genial effort, I might easily enough have 
broken down this barrier. But I was morbidly 
sensitive, and these young barbarians were very 
rough and hard. Not ill-natured, but most un- 
tender. 


230 


Autobiography of a Child 

I wonder if any other child has been so ruth- 
lessly stabbed by home glances as I. The tale 
of the Ugly Duckling is, I believe, as common as 
all the essential legends of human grief and hu- 
man joy. My dislike of large families is born 
of the conviction that every large family holds 
a victim. Amid so many, there is always one 
isolated creature who weeps in frozen secrecy, 
while the others shout with laughter. The un- 
shared gaiety of the group is a fresh provocation 
of repulsion on both sides, and not all the good- 
will of maturity can serve to bridge that first 
sharp division of infancy. The heart that has 
been broken with pain in childhood is never 
sound again, whatever the sequel the years may 
offer. To escape the blighting influence of 
cynicism and harshness is as much as one may 
hope for ; but the muffled apprehension of ache, 
the rooted mistrust bred by early injustice, can 
never be effaced. 

I cannot now remember the cause of all those 
dreadful hours, of all those bitter, bitter tears, 
nor do I desire to recall them. But I still see 
myself many and many a day creeping under 
the bed that none might see me cry, and there 
sobbing as if the veins of my throat should 
burst. Always, I have no doubt, for some fool- 


231 


Autobiography of a Child 

ish or inadequate cause: a hostile look in re- 
sponse to some spontaneous offer of affection, a 
disagreeable word when a tender one trembled 
on my lips, some fresh proof of my isolation, 
a rough gesture that thrust me out of the home 
circle as an intruder, and a scornful laugh in 
front of me as the merry band wandered off 
among the rocks and left me forlorn in the 
garden. A robuster and less sensitive nature 
would have laughed down all these small trou- 
bles, and have scampered into their midst im- 
perious and importunate. A healthier child, 
with sensibilities less on the edge of the skin, not 
cursed with what the French call an ombrageux 
temper, would have broken through this un- 
conscious hostility, and have captured her place 
on the domestic hearth — would probably not 
have been aware of an unfriendly atmosphere. 

But this same morbid sensitiveness, mark 
of my unblessed race, has been the unsleeping 
element of martyrdom in my whole existence. 
^‘Meet the world with a smile,” said a wise and 
genial friend of mine, “and it will give you back 
a smile.” But how can one smile with every 
nerve -torn in the dumb anguish of anticipated 
pain and slight? How can one smile burdened 
by the edged sensibilities and nervousness of 


232 


Autobiography of a Child 

sex and race, inwardly distraught and forced to 
face the world, unsupported by fortune, family, 
or friends, with a brave front? It is already 
much not to cry. But I shed all my tears in 
childhood, and left my sadness behind me. 
When the bigger troubles and tragedies came, 
as they speedily did, I found sustainment and 
wisdom in arming myself with courage and 
gaiety, and so I faced the road. I had then, as 
ever since, plenty of pleasure to temper unhap- 
piness, plenty of bright rays to guide me through 
the obscurities of sentiment and suffering. An 
unfailing beam of humour then and now shed its 
smile athwart the dim bleak forest of emotions 
through which destiny bade me cut my way. 

One dark moment of peculiar bitterness now 
makes me smile. I record it as proof of the tiny 
mole-hills of childhood that constitute moun- 
tains. It shows the kind of booby I was, and 
have ever been, but none the less instructs upon 
the nature of infant miseries. 

We were walking along the road one after- 
noon with Miss Kitty. A public vehicle tore 
down the hill led by four horses, three white 
and one brown. We were four : I the eldest, and 
my three pretty step-sisters. Birdie shouted — 


233 


Autobiography of a Child 

“Oh, look at the three lovely white horses! 
That’s us three. Angela is the brown horse.” 

I regarded this choice as a manifest injustice. 
There was no reason on earth that I should be 
a brown horse any more than one of my step- 
sisters. I was angry and sore at what I deemed 
a slight, and cried — 

“I won’t be the brown horse. I’ll be one of 
the white horses, or else I’ll go away and leave 
you.” 

“No, you won’t, and you may go if you like. 
We don’t want you. We’re three nice white 
horses.” 

Here was an instance when I might have 
laughed down the exclusiveness of these proud 
babies. But no. I must turn back, and walk 
home alone, sulky and miserable, nursing my 
usual feeling of being alone in a cold universe. 

An hour of terrible fright for all of us was 
the morning Birdie fell into Colamore Harbour. 
We were coming down from Killiney Hill, a 
lovely spot more prosperous lands might envy 
us. Birdie walked inside, in a pretty short frock 
of pale green alpaca, and a new hat with red pop- 
pies among the ribbon. In those days Birdie 
and I ran it closely as infant beauties. Her 
hair was a shade more flaxen than mine, and 


234 


Autobiography of a Child 

the roses of her cheeks a shade paler. She was 
fatter, too, and less vapoury; but I carried the 
palm as an ethereal doll, with a classic profile. 
Alas ! the promise of that period was never ful- 
filled. Both profile and pride of beauty van- 
ished on -the threshold of girlhood, to make way 
for the appearance of a dairymaid in their dis- 
tinguished stead. 

The wall of Colamore Harbour was protected 
by an iron chain that swung low from the big 
stones that divided the festoons. Birdie’s foot 
slipped, and the child in a twinkling tumbled 
over, and plunged, with a hollow crash, into the 
heavy grey sea. Happily there were bathing- 
women and fishermen within hail, and as quickly 
as she had taken an unexpected bath. Birdie was 
once more in our midst, dripping like a New- 
foundland, white and shaking with terror. One 
of the big boys took her up in his arms and 
tenderly carried her home. We all followed, 
awed and hysterical. 

My mother was standing in the front garden 
talking to the gardener, when the party marched 
in upon her. She frowned as Birdie was de- 
posited on the gravel path in a woeful state — 
her wet green skirt clinging to her little legs, 


235 


Autobiography of a Child 

the discoloured poppies of her hat flat upon the 
wet ribbon. 

^‘Change that child’s clothes/’ said my moth- 
er, indifferently, as if she were all her life ac- 
customed to the sight of a terrified child rescued 
from the deep, and went on talking to the gar- 
dener. 

It would be a bold and inhuman assertion to 
make, and certainly one I am far from main- 
taining, that harsh treatment is the proper train- 
ing of children. But my mother’s method has 
undoubtedly answered better than that of many 
a tender or self-sacrificing mother. It built us 
in an admirable fashion for adversity, — taught us 
to rely upon ourselves, taught us, above all, that 
necessary lesson, how to suffer and not whine. 
It is only when I observe how feebly and shab- 
bily a spoiled woman can face trouble and pain, 
that I feel one may with reason cherish some 
pride of the power of enduring both with a smile. 
And when, stupefied and shamed, I contemplate 
the petty trickeries to which worldliness and un- 
truthfulness can reduce a woman, the infamous 
devices a slender purse can drag educated 
ladies into, thus am I partially consoled for 
the sufferings of childhood. It is much, when 
one fronts battle, to have been reared in an at- 


236 


Autobiography of a Child 

mosphere of absolute rectitude, of truthful and 
honourable instinct. It is a blessing indeed when 
love includes all this. But bleak as the start was, 
I would not have had it otherwise at the cost 
of these great and virile virtues. And since 
it would appear that the Irish habit of boasting 
is an incorrigible weakness, and that even in 
these democratic days my people still persist 
in descending from kings who have slept in 
peace over seven hundred years, and may with- 
out any extravagant scorn of fact be presumed 
to have passed for ever into the state of legend, 
I am glad to acknowledge the priceless debt of 
common-sense to a Scottish mother. Kings are 
all very well in their way, especially if they hap- 
pen to be reigning; but when one learns as 
authentic fact that an Irish journalist has offered 
an article to an unknown editor, accompanied 
with a letter stating that the blood of seven kings 
runs in his veins, one feels that such a race is 
all the more rational for a little foreign blood to 
modify the imperishable and universal blight of 
royalty. 


237 


Chapter XXVII. 


A DISMAL END OF HOLIDAYS. 

For the joy of our small kingdom a delight- 
ful Fenian dropped into our midst. It was 
breathed among us in fatal undertones that he 
had actually shot a man. He was a figure of 
romance, if ever there was one. He went about 
with long boots, and an opera-glass slung over 
his shoulder. He had lovely dark-blue eyes, 
which Pauline described as Byronic, and lisped 
most captivatingly. He was a kind of adopted 
relative, and, as a special correspondent, has 
passed into history. He became our elder broth- 
er, and in the years to come solaced himself in 
camp by regarding Agnes as a lost early love. 
We lay about him on the grass as he told us 
the tales of the Wonderful Nights. Better still, 
he invented adventures O'f his own almost as 
alarming and enthralling. He told us that he 
had been to Persia, which was not true — but no 
matter. We believed in the Persian princess 
who had swung herself, at the risk of life, from 
238 


Autobiography of a Child 

the harem window to become a Christian and 
marry him ; and the king, her royal father, w'ho 
followed the lovers on horseback and was 
stabbed in the breast by Edmond’s trusty sword. 
The incoherence of his reminiscences constituted 
their conspicuous charm. To-day we left him 
at Samarcand, and on the morrow found him 
with a fresh and more perilous love-adventure 
at Constantinople. 

It was entrancing. 

And then he would offer us a taste of ad- 
venture for ourselves: in the absence of our 
parents he would crowd us into the waggon- 
ette, and drive my stepfather’s pet horses at a 
diabolical rate up by the exquisite coast-road 
of Sorrento, into Bray and through the Wick- 
low mountains, each curve and hollow and hilly 
bank menacing to lay us in pieces upon the 
landscape, and we shouting and hurrahing, in 
a fond notion that we were offering to the uni- 
verse the spectacle of the instability of the Uni- 
ted Kingdom. Edmond’s formidable method of 
conspiring against the Government at that time 
consisted in delighting and amusing a troop 
of little girls ! 

Foolish, reckless creature, alcohol absorbed 
and tarnished his brilliant gifts, and his bones 


239 


Autobiography of a Child 

lie scattered at far-off Khartoum. He made of 
a life that might have been a heroic poem a 
mere trivial legend, and, with his lust for ad- 
venture and peril, he met the death he wished 
for, brief and glorious. 

His fear of my mother filled us with a rap- 
turous sense of comradeship, though this fear 
was quite foolish, for my mother never con- 
cealed her preference for his sex, and to men 
was always as amiable as she was the reverse 
to us. He beamed and joked with her, but was 
careful to scan her visage, on the look-out for 
the first symptoms of storm. The bolt fell 
rudely upon his shoulders the day he lamed the 
horses, and did some damage to the waggonette. 
I never knew what she said to him ; but it must 
have been exceedingly bitter and unbearable, for 
his cheeks were as white as paper, and his eyes 
as black as sloes. He was penniless for the mo- 
ment, and down on his luck, which makes a man 
more nervously sensitive to slig'ht than in his 
happier hours. 

My stepfather was sorry for him ; but, remem- 
bering the horses, was relieved to send him off 
to Spain with a new 'outfit and the inevitable 
opera-glasses. 

^T shall never forget the old Dalkey gar- 


240 


Autobiography of a Child 

den/' he said to Agnes, on the morning of his 
departure, quite as sentimentally as if he were 
talking to a grown-up young person. The ras- 
cal was always playing a part for his own imag- 
ination, and even a slip of a girl of fourteen 
was better than nobody to regret after a three 
weeks' stay in a romantically situated house. 
It was stronger than him. He could not exist 
without a fancied love-affair on hand. 

In the Carlist War, where he claimed to have 
saved the colours of Spain, rejected the hand 
of an Infanta, and lent his last five-pound note 
to Don Carlos, which that illustrious person 
forgot to return, — 'tis a way, he would say mus- 
ingly, with princes, — as he started for battle, 
he pathetically adjured his comrades to cut off a 
lock of his blue-black hair and send it to Agnes, 
with the assurance that his last thought was 
given to her. In the pauses of battle he actually 
entertained himself by composing an imaginary 
correspondence with an ardent and amorous 
Agnes, which he read aloud to his dearest friend, 
with tears in his voice. 

But that, as Mr. Kipling in his earlier man- 
ner would say, is quite another story, and has 
nothing to do with the tale of little Angela. 

I had no time to lament this fresh eclipse 


241 


Autobiography of a Child 

of romance, for Miss Kitty was busy preparing 
my things for Lysterby, and two days after Ed- 
mond's sentimental farewell and departure, I my- 
self most dolefully had said a bitterer good-bye 
to the rocks and harbour and hills of Dalkey, 
and had been transported into the town house, 
to see Mrs. Clement for the last time, and, along 
with her, make my farewell visit to Kildare. 

It was a grievous hour for poor Nurse Coch- 
rane. Jim, her husband, who was down at Wex- 
ford two months ago when I came back from 
Lysterby, had returned a fortnight earlier with 
death in his eyes. 

When we got down at the post-house, the soft 
fine rain of Ireland was drizzling over the land. 
A few steps brought us to the top of the green, 
with the slit of water along the sky and two 
wild swans visible through the pearl mist. All 
the blinds of nurse’s windows were drawn down, 
and I instantly recalled a like picture the day 
Stevie dropped out of life. 

The door was open, and a group of working 
men, in their Sunday suits, were talking in un- 
dertones. 

“What has happened?” asked Mrs. Clement, 
alarmed. 


242 


Autobiography of a Child 

^Troth, ma’am, an’ ’tis a bad day for herself,” 
said one. 

“A power of ill-luck,” said another. fine 
young man struck down like that in the flower 
of youth.” 

Mrs. Clement hurried inside, and I followed 
her in excited silence. In the familiar old par- 
lour, with the china dogs and the green spinet, 
dear kindly nurse sat back in the black horse- 
hair arm-chair, sobbing and moaning in the 
frantic way peasants will when grief strikes 
them, and around her in voluble sympathy wo- 
men hushed and exclaimed and ejaculated, 
“Glory be to God!” “But who’d think of it?” 
“Poor Jim! but ’tis himself was the good poor 
crathur.” 

I advanced hesitatingly, abashed and fright- 
ened by such an explosion of sorrow — I who 
always went under a bed to weep lest others 
should mock me. Not then or since could I 
ever have given expression to such expansive 
and boisterous feeling, restrained by a fierce and 
indomitable pride even at so young an age. 

Nurse caught sight of me, and held out both 
hands. I encircled her neck with my arms, and 
pressed my cheek against 'hers, and when her 


243 


Autobiography of a Child 

sobs had subsided, she stood up, 'holding me 
still in a frenzied clasp. 

‘'Come, darling, and look at him for the last 
time. Poor Jim ! He loved you as if you had 
been his own, his very own, for sure never a 
child had he.’’ 

She took me into Stevie’s room, the best bed- 
room, and on the bed lay a long rigid form. I 
hardly recognised the dear friendly Jim of my 
babyhood, on whose knee I so often sat, in the 
pallid emaciated visage, with the lank black hair 
round it, and the moustache and beard as black 
as pitch against the hollow waxen cheek. The 
same candles were alight upon the table in day- 
time, and the air yielded the same heavy odour of 
flowers as on that other day I had penetrated into 
this room, and found Stevie in his coffin. I shud- 
dered and clung to nurse’s skirt, sick with a 
nameless repulsion, yet I am thankful now that 
I found courage, when she asked me to kiss him, 
not to shrink from that simple duty of gratitude. 
I allowed her to lift me, and I put my mouth to 
the frozen forehead, with what a sense of fear 
and horror I even can recall to-day. I was glad 
to nestle up against Mrs. Clement on the mail- 
car and press my lips against her live arm to get 
the cold contact from them. I felt so miserable. 


244 


Autobiography of a Child 

SO broken was my faith in life, that the return 
to Lysterby passed unnoticed. I remember 
neither the departure, the journey, nor the ar- 
rival at school. 

The episode of my first vacation closed with 
that dread picture of a dead man and a white 
shroud, and in the lugubrious illumination of 
tapers, and nurse sobbing and keening, with no 
hope of comfort. After that the troubles of home 
and school looked poor enough, and for some 
time the nuns found me a very sober and stud- 
ious little girl. It was long before even Mr. 
Parker could raise a smile ; and Play Day, when 
we were permitted to do as we liked all day, 
found me with no livelier desire than to sit still 
and pore over the novels of Lady Georgiana 
Fullerton. 


245 


Chapter XXVIII. 


MY FIRST COMMUNION. 

This period of unwonted mildness in a turbulent 
career was seized by the good ladies of Lysterby 
as a fitting moment for my first communion. It 
might be only a temporary lull in a course of 
perversity which would not occur again, and so 
I was ordered to study anew the lives of the 
saints. This was quite enough to turn my eager 
mind from thoughts of daring deed to dreams 
of sanctity. 

I proposed to model my life on that of each 
fresh saint; was in turn St. Louis of Gonzague, 
St. Elizabeth of Hungary, St. Theresa and St. 
Stanislaus of Koscuetzo, — for the life of me I 
cannot remember the spelling of that Polish 
name, but it began with a K and ended with an 
O, with a mad assortment of consonants and 
vowels between. St. Elizabeth I found very 
charming, until the excessive savagery of her 
confessor. Master Conrad, diminished my en- 
thusiasm. When I came to the barbarous scene 


246 


Autobiography of a Child 

where Master Conrad orders the queen to visit 
him in his monastery, which was against the 
monachal law, and then proceeds to thrash her 
bare back while he piously recites the Miserere, 
I shut the book for ever, and declined upon the 
spot to become a saint. 

Nevertheless I made my first communion in 
a most edifying spirit. I spent a week in retreat 
down in the town convent, and walked for hours 
up and down the high-walled garden discours- 
ing with precocious unctuousness to my good 
friend Mother Aloysius, who, naive soul, was 
lost in wonder and admiration of my gravity 
and sanctimoniousness. I meditated and exam- 
ined my conscience with a vengeance. I de- 
lighted in the conviction of my past wickedness, 
and was so thrilled with the sensation of being 
a converted sinner that, like Polly Evans, gladly 
would I have revived the medieval custom 
of public confession. Contrition once more 
prompted me to pen a conventional letter of pen- 
itence, submission, affection, and promise of 
good behaviour to my mother. Which virtuous 
epistle, like a former one, remained without an 
answer. 

' This was part of the extreme sincerity of my 
mother’s character. She wished her children. 


247 


Autobiography of a Child 

like herself, to be “all of a piece,” and did not 
encourage temporary or sensational develop- 
ments in them. Since she never stooped to play 
for herself or the gallery the part of fond mother, 
she kept at bay any inclination in us to dip into 
filial sentimentalism. Never was there a parent 
less likely to kill the fatted calf on the prodigal's 
return. 

And then, in wreath and veil and white robe, 
with downcast eyes and folded hands to resemble 
the engraving of St. Louis of Gonzague, I 
walked up the little chapel one morning without 
breakfast. The harmonium rumbled, the nov- 
ices sang, the smell of flowers and wax was 
about me, incense sent its perfumed smoke into 
the air, and I lay prostrate over my prie-dieu, 
weeping from ecstasy. I fancied myself on the 
rim of heaven, held in the air by angels. I have 
a notion now that I wanted to die, so unbear- 
able was the ache of spiritual joy. I was liter- 
ally bathed in bliss, and held communion with 
the seraphs. 

It seemed a vulgar and monstrous imperti- 
nence to be carried off, after such a moment, 
to the nuns' refectory and there be fed upon 
buttered toast and crumpets and cake. With 
248 


Autobiography of a Child 

such a feast of good things before me I could 
not eat. I wanted to go back to the chapel and 
resume my converse with the heavenly spheres. 
Instead, Mother Aloysius invited me out to the 
garden, and there spoke long and earnestly, in 
her dear, simple, kindly way, of my duties as a 
Christian. I was no longer a bad troublesome 
child, but a little woman of eleven, with all sorts 
of grave responsibilities. I was to become dis- 
ciplined and studious, check my passion for read- 
ing, take to sewing, and cultivate a respectful 
attitude to my superiors. She owned that for 
the moment I was a model of all the virtues, but 
would it last long, she dubiously added. 

Wise woman ! It did not last long. The nor- 
mal child is occasionally bad and generally good. 
I reversed the order, and was only very occa- 
sionally good and generally as bad as possible. 
The period of temporary beatification over, I 
was speedily at loggerheads again with my old 
enemy Sister Esmeralda. Would you know 
the cause of our last and most violent quarrel? 
Lady Wilhelmina of the Abbey had a little girl 
of my age, so like me that we might have been 
twin-sisters. Because of this strange resem- 
blance, Lady Wilhelmina often invited me up to 


249 


Autobiography of a Child 

the Abbey to play with her daughter Adelaide. 
She was a dull, proud child, whom I rather 
despised, but we got through many an after- 
noon comfortably enough, playing cricket with 
her brother Oswald. One Sunday after bene- 
diction, Adelaide and I were walking side by 
side when we came near Sister Esmeralda talk- 
ing to an elder pupil. 

'‘Isn’t it wonderful that those children should 
be so alike!” exclaimed the girl. "They might 
be twins.” 

"Not at all,” cried Sister Esmeralda, tartly. 
"Lady Adelaide is far handsomer than Angela, 
who is only a common little Irish thing.” 

The words were not meant for my hearing, 
but they stung me as a buffet. I flashed back 
like a wild creature on flame, and stood plant- 
ing in front of my enemy, while Adelaide, pale 
and trembling, caught my dress behind. 

"I heard what you said, and it’s a lie. I’m 
not a common little Irish thing. I am just as 
good as Lady Adelaide — or you, or anybody 
else. The Irish are much nicer than the English 
any day, ever so much nicer, — there, and I 'hate 
you, so I do.” 

"Oh, Angela!” sobbed Adelaide, clutching at 
my dress. 


250 


Autobiography of a Child 

'‘Let me alone, you too !” I screamed, beside 
myself with passion. "I don’t care whether you 
are handsomer than I, for you’re just an ordi- 
nary little girl, not half as clever as 1.” 

Adelaide, who had a spirit of her own, re- 
torted in proper fashion, and before Sister Es- 
meralda had time to shake me and push me in 
before her, I struck the poor little aristocrat 
full on her angry scarlet cheek. 

I was only conscious of the enormity of my 
fall on receiving a tender almost broken-hearted 
note from Mother Aloysius. "Dearest child,” 
it lovingly ran, "what has become of all your 
good resolutions? What about all those nice 
sensible promises of gentle and submissive be- 
haviour you made me down here in the garden ? 
Is that how St. Louis of Gonzague, St. Eliza- 
beth of Hungary, would have acted? Tell Sis- 
ter Esmeralda how sorry you are ; and write, like 
my good little Angela, and tell me you are sorry 
too.” 

I penned with great care a fervent and honest 
reply, which I begged Miss Lawson, the lay 
teacher, to carry to my friend in town. "I’m 
sorry, ever so sorry, because you are sorry, and 
you are the only person here I love. But I won’t 


251 


Autobiography of a Child 

be sorry for Sister Esmeralda. I hate her. She 
said I was a common little Irish thing. It’s 
mean and nasty, for I am only a child and can’t 
hurt her, and she’s big and can hurt me. If I 
am Irish, I am as good as her.” 


2$2 


Chapter XXIX. 


THE LAST OF LYSTERBY AND CHILDHOOD. 

My mother came over again to Lysterby with 
Pauline and Birdie, who shared my last year 
in that quaint old town. My mother’s second 
visit is a vague remembrance. I recall a singular 
old gentleman who joined us in an expedition 
to Guy’s Cliff, and terrified the life out of us 
girls by a harrowing description of the hourly 
peril he walked under, and a fervid assurance 
that he might drop down dead at that very mo- 
ment of speech. We walked behind him in 
frozen fear, and looked each moment to see him 
drop dead at our feet, but my mother discoursed 
in front of us quite unconcerned. He wore a 
cloak with a big cape, and said “Madam” after 
every second word. Guy’s Cliff I remember as 
a lovely place; but the chill water of the well 
was not so chill as my blood while I contem- 
plated that doomed old man. 

Pauline’s latest enthusiasm was Miss Brad- 
don, and what glorious things she made of 


253 


Autobiography of a Child 

'‘Lady Audley’s Secret/' "Aurora Floyd/' and, 
I fancy, a tale about a Captain Vulture ! I read 
these books afterwards (that is the two first), 
and what poor tawdry stuff, my faith, compared 
with the brilliant embroideries of my most imag- 
inative sister, who turned lead into pure gold! 

Years, how many, many years, after, a man of 
European fame, one of the rare figures that go to 
make up a century’s portraits, speaking of Paul- 
ine, said she was the cleverest woman he had 
even known. But alas! alas! hers was not a 
cleverness a woman poor and obscure could 
utilise. A man, she would have been a great 
statesman, for she was a born politician. Geog- 
raphy was her passion, history her mania, — not 
that she could ever have written history, for s'he 
was too quick, complex, and vital to learn so 
slow a trade as that of a writer’s; but hers was 
a miraculous intuitive seizure of history, that 
made it to her imperious vision present, and not 
the smallest historical fact in Europe escaped her 
attention and remembrance. Could crowned 
heads but know what a severe and unflinching 
gaze was fixed upon them ! of w'hat singular and 
passionate importance to her was the marriage 
of their most distant relatives ! Modern his- 
tory and modern politics became to 'her what 


254 


Autobiography of a Child 

classical music had been to our daft grandfather, 
whom she strongly resembled. They absorbed 
her, filled the long, long days of sick and lonely 
maidenhood, when, such was the vividness, the 
surprising vitality of her matchless imagination, 
that in a dull seaside residence she found, and 
lived and died in, her own excitements and grati- 
fications of mind and soul. 

Miss Lawson before leaving the convent had 
inoculated us, the little ones, her devoted ad- 
mirers, with a curious passion for pinafored 
mites — whist. Whist for several months became 
the object of our existence. Lessons in com- 
parison were but a trivial occupation. When 
Birdie and I next went home, we taught the 
game to still smaller mites, and such were the 
gamblers we became, that we have played whist, 
I the eldest of the four confederates, twelve, with 
renowned and aged clubmen, who found us their 
match. We slept with a pack of cards under our 
pillow, and dawn found us four little night- 
dressed girls gathered together in one bed with 
the lid of a bandbox over our joined knees, rap- 
turously playing whist. 

On the pretext of meeting our father at the 
station of Dalkey every evening at half-past six, 
we took possession of the waiting-room, cards 


255 


Autobiography of a Child 

in hands, and imperiously acquainted our friend 
the station-master with the fact that the room 
was engaged. The novelty of the situation so 
tickled the station-master that while we four 
miscreants in short skirts played our game of 
whist, not a soul was allowed to enter the wait- 
ing-room — an injustice I now marvel at. 

The boys and girls around us were neglected. 
We only cared for whist, which we played from 
the time we got up until we went to bed, with no 
other variation that I remember except sea-bath- 
ing and Captain Marryat’s novels. As none of 
the boys or girls shared our desperate passion, 
it followed that I and my three smaller step- 
sisters became inseparable, and held all our fel- 
lows w'ho did not live for whist to be poor dull 
creatures. Once we made part of a children’s 
gathering at Killiney Hill, but after the cold 
chicken, jelly, cakes, and lemonade, we speed- 
ily found life intolerable without a pack of cards. 

^T say, Angela,*’ whispered Birdie to me, when 
I was musing of honours and the odd trick, *T’ve 
brought them. Let’s go behind a tree and have 
a game.” 

Now I always take a hand with pleasure be^ 
cause of that defunct vice ; but, alas ! I am com- 
256 


Autobiography of a Child 

pelled to own that I never played so well as at 
eleven. 

My next passion, for which Pauline this time 
was responsible, was genealogy. We invented a 
family called the L’Estranges and brought them 
over with the Conqueror. Where they had prev- 
iously come from we did not ask. What did it 
matter? To come over with the Conqueror was, 
we knew, a certificate of chivalry. The dhief, 
Walter, fought at the Battle of Hastings. We 
pictured him with golden locks, a bright and 
haughty visage, stern grey eyes that could look 
ineffably soft in a love-scene, and beautiful shin- 
ing armour. We married him to a certain Saxon 
Edith, and down as far as the Battle of Bos- 
worth Field, Walter and Edith were the fav- 
ourite family names of the L’Estranges. To give 
piquancy to our most delightful game, and stim- 
ulate our imagination, we founded a cemetery 
of the L’Estranges. We made little wooden 
tombstones, on which we carved imaginary epi- 
taphs of all the imaginary L’Estranges who had 
died since the Battle of Hastings. As we loathed 
old people in our dramatic history, except the 
aged lord who dies blessing a numerous progeny 
from time to time, all our resplendent heroes per- 
ished in romantic youth on the Spanish Main, 


257 


Autobiography of a Child 

on battle-fields, on the African coast; or rescu- 
ing Turkish princesses, or capturing Grecian 
isles; while their brides invariably faded away 
either of consumption or a broken heart at sev- 
enteen. The cemetery was peopled to excess by 
the time we got as far as the Battle of Bosworth 
Field, where the last hero fell in front of the 
enemy before he had time to marry the maiden 
of his choice. 

It is astonishing how little the average child 
approves of a natural death. The heroes must 
die by violence in the flower of youth, and the 
heroines must perish or pine away from unnat- 
ural causes on the threshold of maidenhood. 
Nineteen is even old and commonplace : the age 
of glory is seventeen. 

If you entered our garden, turned into the 
cemetery of the L’Estranges, you would have 
seen layer upon layer of little wooden sticks 
that looked like the indication of hidden seeds, 
and if you stooped to read the legend, this is 
the sort of thing that would have greeted your 
eyes : — 

''Here lies Walter TEstrange” (or Rupert, or 
Ralph, or Reginald, for we were fond of these 
names), "born such and such a year, wrecked 
off the coast of Barbary such and such a year,” 
258 


Autobiography of a Child 

or “perished in a conflict with Spanish pirates,” 
&c. ; and beside him, with day and date of birth 
and burial, “Here lies Edith, his beloved wife, 
daughter of Lord Seymour or Admiral So-and- 
so.” 

In a big ledger, recorded in Pauline’s sprawl- 
ing caligraphy, were the lives and characters of 
the imaginary dead. It was remarkable that all 
our heroes were as brave as lions, as modest and 
mild as lambs, and as stainless as Galahads. 
To lend relief to the monotony of their implac- 
able virtue, we now and then invented a villain, 
who invariably died in a vulgar brawl or a duel. 
The battlefield, the Spanish Main, the rescue of 
Turkish princesses, and a noble shipwreck, were 
kept for the Galahads. 

The last profile of my Lysterby days is that 
of a radiant and lovely Irish girl, who came from 
Southampton, the Mother House of the Ladies 
of Mercy, to stay with us until the nuns found 
her a situation as governess. Her name was 
Molly O’Connell: she was doubly orphaned al- 
most since birth, her mother having died giv- 
ing life to her, and her father within the follow- 
ing year. Everybody about her thought it very 
sad that her mother should have died on the 
very day of her birth. But I, alas ! knew a sadder 


259 


Autobiography of a Child 

thing. My father, who, I am told, was a very 
kindly, tender-hearted man, died some months 
before my birth. Had I been given the choice 
beforehand, and known what was in store for me, 
I should have greatly preferred it had been my 
mother who died many months before my birth. 
But, alas! babies in the ante-natal stage are 
never consulted upon the question of their own 
interest. 

Molly O’Connell remains upon memory as 
beauty in a flash. Never since have I seen such 
a flashing combination of brilliant effects. Oh ! 
such teeth — teeth to dream of, teeth that laughed 
and smiled, that had a sort of light in them like 
white sunshine, and were the fullest expression I 
have ever known of the word radiance! Then 
her eyes were pools of violet light, where 
you seemed to see straight down to the 
bottom of a deep well, violet all the way down 
to the very end, where you saw yourself re- 
flected. These glorious eyes, like the teeth, 
smiled and laughed ; they caressed, too, looked 
an unfathomable tenderness and sweetness, 
shone, irradiated like stars, went through the 
whole gamut of visual emotion, from the holiest 
feeling, the effable eloquence of sentiment, to the 
bewildering obscurities of passion. They were 


260 


Autobiography of a Child 

eyes, I now know, to damn a saint, and — Heaven 
help us all in a world so inexplicable as ours! 
— they performed their fatal mission to the bitter 
end. Add to these eyes and teeth hair as dark as 
shadow, as thick as the blackness of night, a 
scarlet and white face, round and dimpled, of 
the divinest shape, the rarest and ripest com- 
bination of fruit and flower, with deep peaeh- 
like bloom upon the soft cheek, and the hue 
of a crimson cherry upon the curved full lips, 
and there you have a woman equipped for her 
own destruction, if she have a heart to lose, no 
brains to speak of, and only as much knowledge 
of man, of the world, as a fresh-born kitten or 
a toddling babe. 

Molly was the joy, the light, the glory, the 
romance of our lives. We worshipped her for 
her unsurpassable loveliness, which kept rows 
of young eyes fixed upon her charming visage 
in round-lidded, wonder and awe ; we adored her 
for her gaiety, her chatter, her incessant laugh- 
ter, and we loved her for the conviction that she 
was as young and innocent and helpless and un- 
lettered as ourselves. 

Molly was nineteen, but she was a bigger 
child than any of us ; and now I hold my breath 
in pain when I remember the nature and quality 


261 


Autobiography of a Child 

of her innocence. She had been brought up 
from infancy in a convent. Had her life lain 
among the roses, such ignorance as hers might 
be pardoned in her teachers. But to send out 
into the world, to earn her living among selfish 
and indifferent strangers, a young girl of such 
bewildering exquisiteness, and never once hint 
to her the kind of perils that would beset her, 
give her no knowledge of man, nor of herself, 
nor of nature! This is an iniquity the nuns of 
Southampton can never be pardoned. 

Now that I know the sequel, and understand 
what the beginning meant, I cannot recall our 
laughter over Molly’s first experiences without 
a thrill of horror. The nuns had placed her 
with titled folk — Lord and Lady E., with whom 
lived Lady E.’s father, an old earl, a widower. 
Molly was the most ingenuous and garrulous of 
creatures. She spent 'her first vacation some 
months later with us, and kept us at recreation 
hour in shouts of laughter and scorn over her 
adventures. The old earl was the most extra- 
ordinary old man, according to her. He was al- 
ways meeting her alone, here, there, and every- 
where. She seemed to think it was a sort of 
schoolboy’s game. Once he showed her in the 
262 


Autobiography of a Child 

garden, when no one was by, a splendid diamond 
bracelet, which he had bought for her. 

Molly !” we all screamed in joy, ‘‘he wants 
to marry you, and you’ll be a grand countess, 
like the gipsy maiden of the song.” 

But Molly curled her lips haughtily. Did we 
know that he was seventy, a queer old gentle- 
man, just fit to be tucked into bed and given 
gruel? The suspicion of evil design never once 
entered her innocent head, for the simple rea- 
son that she had not the ghost of a suspicion of 
any kind of evil. 

Then Lady E. went up to town, and left this 
bewitching creature at the mercy of her husband. 
Molly again regarded it in the light of a capital 
game. The aged earl and his middle-aged son- 
in-law appeared to be on strained terms. The 
poor goose never suspected why. Lord E. in- 
sisted on her sitting in his wife’s place at table — 
and still she suspected nothing. 

One night, she told us, shrieking with laugh- 
ter as at the height of the grotesque. Lord E. 
mistook her room for the nursery, and entered 
it in his shirt. Not the faintest feeling of anger 
or fear on the part of this blind, silly maid. All 
she did was to go into convulsions of laughter, 
“because he looked so ugly and so ridiculous.” 

263 


Autobiography of a Child 

But it was still part of the high old game of life, 
where everything happens to send one into fits 
of laughter. That tears, that trouble, that shame 
and blighting misery lay in wait for her, this 
radiant, unconscious, ignorant, and foolish in- 
nocent could not then suspect. 

We, too, thought it a splendid game, laughed 
heartily at the ridiculous figure she described 
Lord E. as cutting in his nightshirt, agreed with 
her that the old earl was a monstrous old fool to 
go skipping in that absurd way down the park 
avenues with her, putting his hand upon his 
heart, sighing and talking in a wild incoherent 
way about “the loveliest girl on earth,’’ whom 
Molly, the least vain of creatures, never for one 
moment suspected was herself. For she was far 
too busy laughing at people to understand them. 
You had but to stand solemnly before her, and 
say, “It’s a wet day,” and off she was on a ring- 
ing cascade. What you said she probably did 
not understand in the least; but the expression 
of your eye, the tone of your voice, made her 
laug'h. 

And so the infamous nature of the pursuit of 
the earl and his son-in-law quite escaped her, 
and neither the diamond bracelet, nor Lord E. 
in his shirt at night in her room, awoke the 
264 


Autobiography of a Child 

faintest throb of alarm. All this to her and us 
was part of the eternal joke of nature. And a 
very, very few years afterwards, T learned, one 
who had loved her well and sought her far dis- 
covered her at night in the vicinity of the Hay- 
market, with paint upon her cheeks and lips, and 
the fatal brightness of consumption looking out 
of her hollow violet eyes. 

My remembrance of the rest of my stay at 
Lysterby fades away upon the heavy perfume 
of incense in the cold aisles of the cathedral, 
whither we were conducted by the nuns for the 
breathlessly interesting offices of Holy Week. 
It is a long dream of sombre tones and solemn 
notes, which I followed in a passionate absorp- 
tion in the ‘^Offices of Holy Week,’’ printed in 
Latin and English, for which I paid the sum of 
four shillings. I studied those offices so dili- 
gently, followed them so accurately, that after- 
wards I could detect to a movement, a note, a 
Latin word, any error or omission in the Lenten 
services of the pro-cathedral of Dublin, where I 
must say the rites struck me as shorn of all 
impressiveness. 

But at Lysterby functions were rigidly cor- 
rect. The evening office of Tenebrse was a 
funereal delight. The services of Maundy Thurs- 
265 


Autobiography of a Child 

day, Good Friday, and Holy Saturday were re- 
ligious excitements on which to live for months. 
I shut my eyes, even now in middle age, and 
I see again the long grey cathedral aisles dim in 
taper-light, altars hung in black, and the lean 
aristocratic vis'age of Father More above the 
surplice and violet stole, and I hear him chant 
in his thin, melodious voice, “Oremus, flect- 
amus genua !’^ and listen again for the response, 
‘Tevate!” 

I cannot precisely define my sensations in this 
period. Religion with me was nothing but an 
intense emotion nourished upon incense, music, 
taper-lit gloom, and a mysterious sense of the 
intangible. It was in the fullest meaning of the 
word sensuous; but while its attraction lasted, 
nothing I have since known could be compared 
with it for intensity. While under its spell, you 
seem to float in the air, to touch the wings of 
the angels, to be yourself part of the heavenly 
sphere you aspire to attain. Rapture itself is a 
mean enough word to define your emotions. 
And then you come back to earth with a sense 
of unspeakable deception and surprise. You feel 
hungry, and loathe yourself for the vulgar need. 
Your ear is buffeted by loud earthly sounds in- 


266 


Autobiography of a Child 

stead of the roll of the organ and the monoton- 
ous solemnity of Gregorian chant. 

To realise this is to understand how so many 
sentimental, virtuous, and sensuous souls seek 
oblivion of life in religious excitement. It is a 
mental and moral mixture of opium and alcohol 
extremely soothing to the bruised conscious- 
ness, a gentle diversion in common-place cares 
that poor humanity must not be begrudged; 
though, as George Eliot has finely said, it is 
proof of strength to live and do well without this 
narcotic. 

The return tO' Ireland coincides with the out- 
break of the Franco-German war. A mist hangs 
over those terrible months, but Dublin I re- 
member was French to a man. Every morning 
my eldest sister marched us off to mass to pray 
for the French, and we wept profusely over each 
tragic telegram. Our hero Edmond was over 
there, fighting and lying with equal gallantry. 
Several noble dames had tended his wounds and 
offered to marry him, and he escaped from pris- 
on with the assistance of the jailer’s daughter, 
who loved him despairingly. I recall our awed 
inspection of several helmets and swords brought 
back from the war by a quantity of heroic young 
Irishmen who professed to have laid the Ger^ 
267 


Autobiography of a Child 

mans low on countless occasions. I do not 
now know what they did out there, for there 
is always a great deal of Tartarin, an atmosphere 
of Tarascon, about the Irishman returned from 
abroad. But we all went down in a glorified 
body, dressed in our very best, to assist at the 
arrival of Marshal M’Mahon and his wife, who 
came all the way from far-off France to thank 
us for what they had or had not done. 

Here, at the age of twelve, my childhood ends, 
and youth, troubled youth, begins. 


To stand upon the hill-top and cast a glance 
of retrospection down the long path travelled in 
all its excess of light and shadow; impenetrable 
darkness massed against a luminous haze 
through which rays of blazing glory filter, each 
one striking upon memory in a shock of pris- 
matic hues, until the eye reaches as far back 
as the start from the valley, — how astonished 
we are at the unevenness of the road ! So bril- 
liant, so ineffectual for most of us, is this dear 
thing called Youth! The uneasy flutter from 
the nest, the wild throb of pulses, now for ever 
tamed, at each sharp encounter with fate; the 
courage, the hope, the passion — alas ! how futile 
268 


Autobiography of a Child 

and how sad to eyes in middle life that see the 
inexorable word '‘failure” written across that 
splendid tear-blotted page of strife, of yearning, 
of frailty and endeavour. Seen from the hill- 
top, how small the big stones are that broke our 
path ! How easy it might have been to skirt the 
thorn-bushes and brambles, instead of tearing an 
impulsive way through them, and falling so re- 
peatedly on bleeding face and hands ! 

Impatience and panting courage have served 
to carry us through the unequal battle, and now, 
resting in the equable tones of middle life, how- 
sweet a wonder seem the blackness, the purple, 
the golden lights of youth! We sit in the un- 
emotional shade, and slake our thirst for the old 
joys and sorrows by fondly recalling the ghosts 
of dead hours and dead dreams, of forgotten 
faiths and dim-remembered faces; and though 
we may not desire to re-live each year with its 
burden of pains and pangs, surely we may tell 
ourselves that it is good to have lived those past 
years, even if tears seem the most prominent 
part of our inheritance. 

Then, however sad the living moment, we 
still had the consolation of that beautiful and 
vision-bearing word “To-morrow.” In youth, 
sorrow fells us to-day, and joy awakes us 
269 


Autobiography of a Child 

to-morrow. It is always — Land may be in sight 
to-morrow ! The night is dark, but hope dances 
blithely through our veins with the delicious 
assurance that to-morrow brings the sun. The 
world is empty, but vague dreams tell us that 
to-morrow love will cross our path and fill the 
universe. Hope is the magician that waved us 
forward and carried us recklessly through briar 
and bramble, with undaunted confidence in life, 
in ourselves, and in all things around us. Each 
fall was ever the last, each pang the precursor 
of eternal happiness. 

And now it is over. Hope’s magic wand 
for us is broken, and she has folded her wings 
and dropped into slumber that wakens not 
again: henceforth our best friend is drab-robed 
content. 


THE END. 


270 




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